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Last week, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. introduced new national dietary guidelines. The government giddily threw out Michelle Obama’s admittedly joyless MyPlate (opens in new tab) infographic, introduced in 2011, and reclaimed the original 1992 food pyramid image — but flipped it on its head. The upside-down triangle is now filled with colorful pictures of a generally healthy mix of broccoli, frozen peas, an apple, avocado, chicken, butter, whole milk — all topped off with a nice, juicy T-bone.
The meaty audacity of this gesture feels familiar. It’s as though our country has been told to eat like a San Francisco tech bro. Jacob Peters, the young founder of Superpower, “the world’s most comprehensive longevity system on the planet,” is just one of them; we met last year at a lunch to which he brought his own beef tallow.
Peters gave me his take on the new pyramid: “We’ve taken the power back,” he said with on-message enthusiasm. “High-quality, nutrient-dense fats are, as you know, a staple of mine and I think really important for health.” Peters eats 160 grams of protein daily (30% of it from red meat, 30% from poultry and fish, and 40% from plant-protein powder and actual plants).
The new food pyramid. | Source: Courtesy US Government
In an email, Bryan Johnson, the L.A.-based king of the “Don’t Die” longevity movement, said the new guidelines are “a big upgrade,” in part because they “move on from the dogmas of stigmatizing and largely capping fats regardless of source and type.” One of his few quibbles? He actually suggests limiting consumption of red meat and instead prioritizing protein- and fiber-rich legumes.
Meanwhile the big-pec’ed podcaster and Stanford neuroscientist Andrew Huberman, who has popularized many longevity theories, called the new dietary guidelines “spot on (opens in new tab).” He posted an image on X (opens in new tab) of a skinny, pale, bald man being forcibly removed, with the quip: “The new @HHSGov (opens in new tab) food pyramid’s take on veganism and grains.”
The 2026 dietary recommendations could be summed up as “Eat food. Not many grains. Fry everything in beef tallow.”
Many experts — like Christopher Gardner (opens in new tab), director of nutrition studies at the Stanford School of Medicine, and author Michael Pollan, who I interviewed last week — are on board with the government’s message that whole foods are good and ultraprocessed foods are bad. But the change they have criticized most is the recommendation to increase one’s daily protein intake from 0.8 grams per kg of body weight to 1.2 to 1.6 grams. (It is not surprising to find that “Big Meat” was behind the new guidelines (opens in new tab).)
As a rebuttal to Pollan’s “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants,” the 2026 dietary recommendations could be summed up as “Eat food. Not many grains. Fry everything in beef tallow.” As Kim Severson wrote (opens in new tab) in The New York Times, “This relatively obscure cooking medium quickly became a political symbol (opens in new tab) for the Trump allies pushing for drastic change to the American food system.” RFK likes his cow fat (opens in new tab).
I’m no vegetarian, but what I don’t like about the high-protein craze is that, for those who only skim the guidelines, it appears to encourage Americans to eat even more animals. It smacks of wealth and privilege, with little concern for anything else. Peters is less bothered. “There are a lot of things that are bad for the environment, probably even worse than cow methane production,” he said. “Producing processed almond milk takes, like, an absurd amount of water.”
What about animal welfare? Is that ever a part of the Superpower equation? “Frankly,” he said, “I’ve never thought about it.”
