The Food Pyramid Was Metabolically Backwards

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Issue #26: January 12, 2026

🍽️ The Food Pyramid Was Upside Down — And We Paid For It

One of the strangest things about American nutrition is that we pretend it’s complicated, when the results are right in front of us. If the old food pyramid worked, we wouldn’t have:

• ≈42% of adults obese (CDC, 2023)

• Over half the country insulin resistant or prediabetic

• Some of the worst metabolic health outcomes in the developed world

• The highest healthcare spending on Earth

We followed that system for almost 40 years. The base was grains and starches. The message was “avoid fat.” Everything else was an afterthought.

Looking at where we are now, it’s pretty obvious that advice didn’t age well.

So when I saw the recent HHS/RFK-aligned “Reimagined Food Pyramid” concept floating around — protein, dairy, and healthy fats at the bottom, ultra-processed foods at the very top — my reaction wasn’t “wow, controversial.” It was more like: yeah, that checks out.

The underlying metabolic logic makes more sense than the 1992 pyramid ever did. Here’s why…

🤦‍♂️ We Built a Food System Around Blood Sugar Spikes

When you make grains and starch the foundation of the national diet, you get a population that eats:

• Bread

• Cereal

• Pasta

• Crackers

• Oat-based everything

• Snack bars

• Chips

Metabolically, most of that is just glucose dressed up in different packaging. It digests quickly, spikes blood sugar, and keeps insulin high.

Insulin’s job is to store fuel, not burn it. When insulin stays elevated, you get very good at storing fat and very bad at accessing it.

Combine that with a sedentary society and you get exactly what we have now.

The irony is that we pushed this exact style of eating on the population least equipped to handle glucose swings.

🧈 The “Fat is Evil” Era Didn’t Work

For decades, “low-fat” automatically meant “healthy.” So we removed fat from food and replaced it with:

• Sugar

• Corn-derived sweeteners

• Refined flour

• Maltodextrin

• Industrial seed oils

The result? Food that spikes blood sugar faster, doesn’t keep you full, and is very easy to overeat.

Fat, on the other hand:

• Slows digestion

• Blunts glucose spikes

• Boosts satiety

• Supports hormone production

• Makes up most of your brain

Omega-3 fats lower inflammation. Olive oil improves endothelial function. Full-fat dairy is linked with better metabolic outcomes in several large cohorts.

Seed oils are a different story — many are omega-6 dominant and prone to oxidation at high heat, which isn’t helpful for inflammation or metabolic stability. If you want the deeper dive there, I already did an entire issue breaking down the research here.

If you want a summary of the 90s: we demonized butter and eggs, then sold people low-fat cookies. It didn’t work.

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🥩 Protein Was Never the Villain

Protein is the most metabolically underrated macronutrient.

It:

1. Builds and preserves muscle — which isn’t just aesthetic; it’s the primary site of glucose disposal.

2. Improves insulin sensitivity — higher protein diets consistently show better glycemic control.

3. Increases satiety — protein literally tells your brain “we’re done here.”

4. Has the highest thermic effect — you burn more calories digesting it than carbs or fat.

And red meat is nutrient-dense in a way grains simply aren’t: B12, heme iron, zinc, creatine, carnitine.

Protein should have been the base of the pyramid from day one.

🌾 Whole Grains Are Not Essential

Whole grains get treated as universally healthy, but that’s not actually true for everyone. At best, they’re optional — you can get every nutrient they offer from more nutrient-dense foods. At worst, they can create problems for a lot of people, especially those who are:

• Insulin resistant

• Autoimmune or gluten-sensitive

• Dealing with GI/FODMAP issues

• Trying to reverse metabolic syndrome

Fiber, magnesium, B vitamins? You can get those all from:

• Vegetables

• Fruits

• Tubers

• Beans

• Nuts & seeds

There is no disease caused by not eating whole grains.

There is a disease caused by not getting B12 (pernicious anemia), and it damages the nervous system. The contrast speaks for itself.

So the idea that whole grains should anchor the human diet doesn’t really hold up — especially for a population where metabolic dysfunction is the norm, not the exception.

🧪 The Evidence Never Supported a High-Grain / Low-Fat Base

Zoom out and the research over the last 10–15 years lines up pretty clearly:

• Low-carb or low-glycemic approaches tend to outperform low-fat for metabolic markers

• Higher protein improves body composition and satiety

• Dairy fat is not the villain it was made out to be

• Olive oil + omega-3 fats are beneficial

• Ultra-processed foods drive caloric overconsumption

• Insulin resistance improves when refined carbs go down

This isn’t fringe science. It’s just inconvenient for an old paradigm.

🧃 Ultra-Processed Foods Are the Real Villain

If there’s one thing the updated pyramid gets absolutely right, it’s this: ultra-processed foods belong at the top in tiny portions.

UPFs are engineered for:

• Low satiety

• High palatability

• Fast eating velocity

• Bliss point flavor chemistry

There’s an NIH metabolic ward study where participants consumed ~500 extra calories per day on an ultra-processed diet vs. whole foods — despite equal macros and instructions to eat freely.

They didn’t even realize they were overeating. That’s the point. UPFs bypass the body’s normal “stop eating” signals.

That’s how you scale obesity.

🧩 The Bottom Line

America didn’t end up metabolically sick because everyone suddenly got lazy. We built a national diet around foods that spike insulin, don’t keep you full, and offer very little nutrient density.

The newer pyramid concept flips that:

✔ Base = protein + dairy + healthy fats
✔ Micronutrients + carbs = vegetables, fruit, tubers
✔ Grains are optional, not mandatory
✔ Ultra-processed foods = rarely

If the country ate like that for 20 years, our obesity, diabetes, and heart disease curves would look very different — no new drugs required.

👤 How I Eat (For Context)

I’m not keto, not carnivore, not plant-based. I just try to eat in a metabolically sane way:

• Protein at every meal

• Carbs from potatoes, blueberries, honey, sometimes rice

• Full-fat dairy (grass-fed yogurt + milk)

• Extra virgin olive oil for cooking

• Minimize ultra-processed food

• Avoid seed oils

At the end of the day, biology doesn’t care about trends, it cares about inputs.

Until next week. Stay vital.

-Jordan Slotopolsky

📚 Sources

• CDC / NHANES (2023) — obesity & prediabetes prevalence

• Hall et al., 2019 (NIH, Cell Metabolism) — ultra-processed → +~500 kcal/day

• Mansoor et al., 2016 (Br J Nutr) — low-carb vs low-fat meta-analysis

• Bueno et al., 2013 (Br J Nutr) — low-carb improves metabolic markers

• Ebbeling & Ludwig, 2018 (BMJ) — diet composition affects expenditure

• Westerterp-Plantenga / Leidy — protein → satiety + thermic effect

• DeFronzo et al., J Clin Invest — muscle as glucose disposal site

• PURE Study (Dehghan, 2018, Lancet) — dairy fat & metabolic outcomes

• PREDIMED (Estruch, 2013, NEJM) — olive oil + nuts → cardiometabolic benefit