Remember Project 2025: A Mandate for Conservative Leadership? Eliminating or reforming the Dietary Guidelines is in there. The reasoning behind this goal is:

the influential Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee veered off mission and attempted to persuade the USDA and HHS to adopt nutritional advice that focused not just on human health, but the health of the planet. Issues such as climate change and sustainability infiltrated the process… the Dietary Guidelines remain a potential tool to influence dietary choices to achieve objectives unrelated to the nutritional and dietary well-being of Americans.

Well, we still have the Guidelines because eliminating them will involve lawmakers. Still, HHS did announce some changes.

The Obama administration did away with the Food Pyramid and introduced “MyPlate.” It looks like this:

The graphics for MyPlate are pretty straightforward. If you divide your plate like this and fill it with the about that much food from each category, you should have a balanced diet.

The graphic for the New Pyramid looks like this:

The items you should eat the most of are at the top and the least are at the bottom. I have a hard time comparing these two in any significant way. My mind can get visualize a plate much easier than this inverted pyramid.

So let’s look a little deeper. Of course the number of calories each of us should consume will depend on age, level of activity, and the weight we want to maintain. So let’s just compare the Recommendations for a 1600 calorie diet.

Type of Food	MyPlate	NewPyramid
Protein	5 ounces (vary the source)	2.5-3.5 servings (example: 1 egg + 3 oz meat + 2 T nut butter)
Fruit fresh	1.5 cups	1.5 cups
Vegetables fresh	2 cups	2.5 cups
Whole grain	5 oz. (a piece of whole grain bread weighs about 1.5 oz.)	1.5-3.75 servings (example: 1/2 c rice + 1 slice bread + 1 tortilla)
Dairy	3 cups (move to low-fat or fat-free)	3 cups
Fat	Limit saturated fat to 18 g (3 tsp of butter weighs 14 g and has 7 g of saturated fat)	3.5 tsp olive oil or butter (3 tsp of butter weighs 14 g)

MyPlate includes recommendations for activity and limits on sugar and sodium. Although the head of HHS has talked about reduced sugar, additives, and dyes, the NewPyramid fails to reflect that.

Well now, that was a lot of work on my part to determine that not much has changed. I guess the authors of Project 2025 can claim a victory. Maybe. According to the HHS press release:

Kennedy described the guidelines as the most significant reset on nutrition policy in history, calling for an end to policies that promote highly refined foods that are harmful to health.

That seems like quite a stretch.

I wonder how much taxpayer money went into this “Historical change.” And, how did MyPlate focus on the health of the planet that Project 2025 was so concerned about? Did HHS change that?

Check out the screen shots below for more information.