07/01/2026
This is a landmark moment - and one I never expected to see in our lifetime.
Long before this shift, our community had already worked out what our bodies need to thrive. We trusted lived experience over outdated guidance.
For over a decade, AFK has educated families on the harms of processed foods, coached them back to health, and for the past five years, delivered consistent, independent product reviews to guide supermarket choices.
We listened to our bodies.
Now, the guidelines are finally catching up!
A new announcement has been made in the USA regarding food, nutrition and health!
With 70% of Americans overweight or obese and more than 50% are diabetic, and 70% have at least one chronic disease, this affects every American family. This is despite decades of modern nutrition “science” and government food guidelines, so something had to change.
90% of US healthcare spending goes into “treating” people with chronic diseases. The epidemic of chronic diseases have happened because real food has been pushed aside in favour of convenience foods, fast foods, processed foods, junk foods, as well as very bad nutrition advice being promoted to everyone, even by the government and alleged health authorities.
These health epidemics are not confined to America, but to almost all countries of the world.
With many changes occurring in the USA since their last election, likely led by Robert Kennedy Jnr as the Health and Human Services Secretary, as the boss of the department of health, a new era in health and REAL FOOD has started!
This means real food which nourishes the body, restores health, brings back energy, builds strength! This has started with fixing and reclaiming the food pyramid and giving real nutrition advice again!
I’m sure people recall the “food pyramid”, as you probably learnt this when you were even in primary school! But the first food pyramid was invented in 1924 by a Dietitian called Mary Barber, who was working for the Kelloggs company! She decided to put grain based foods at the bottom of the food pyramid, being the section of the pyramid to eat the most of, because that’s what Kelloggs produced – grain based foods and cereals! It was just a marketing ploy and not based on any nutrition science at the time. Or any nutrition science since.
So now the USA and HHS has a new food pyramid to help improve the health of Americans, and hopefully people in other countries too. I’ve said this many times over many years – “Just eat real food”!
The previous food pyramid recommended having 6-11 services of grains every day! THIS IS INSANE! This will cause major blood sugar issues due to the amount of carbs being metabolised into glucose, and the high levels of inflammation and oxidative damage from the high blood glucose, gluten, toxic folic acid, and toxic chemicals that the grains are exposed to in their production.
Many people have commented in the past that the food pyramid is upside down! That we should be eating LESS grain based foods, and more of the health fats which have been demonised in all previous food pyramids to be the foods to eat the least amount of. The new 2026 food pyramid fixes many of the issues of the biased and dangerous previous food pyramid, by placing grain-based foods still at the bottom of the pyramid, but the pyramid has been inverted, so now the grain foods are the foods you should be eating the LEAST! Or not at all, in my opinion…
The new US food pyramid and dietary guidelines can be found on this new website:
https://realfood.gov/
The new US food pyramid has been added as the picture for the article. I'll put the old pyramid in the comments.
I’ll go into more detail on the new US food guidelines once I have read it all, and I will post more information then.
As a Clinical Nutritionist, these changes to the food pyramid and food guidelines are a massive step in the right direction to improving the health of so many people! But there are some limitations or issues I still have with this plan.
Not everyone is the same. So no diet or food guidelines will work for everyone. People from different ethnicities have different genetics which defines the types of foods they should eat or can tolerate or not. So dairy and wheat or grain-based foods are still likely to be a health issue for a LOT of people who traditionally have never consumed these foods and they don’t have the genetics to metabolise them.
Hopefully we can see something similar here in Aus soon, but I'm not holding my breath!
I'd love to see the faces and reactions of the Dietitians in the US coming into work today and find their entire world has been turned upside down!!! They will be crying into their sugar-laden cereals with low fat soy milk!
What are your thoughts on these changes?
Stay healthy!
