It’s the height of arrogance for bureaucrats to tell us what to eat.
It’s the height of arrogance for bureaucrats to tell us what to eat.
I n “Baby Got Back,” his ode to prodigious posteriors, rapper and amateur dietician Sir Mix-a-Lot provides some nutritional advice to those seeking an ample booty. Of his dream woman, he notes, “red beans and rice didn’t miss her.”
It is unclear whether Robert F. Kennedy Jr. or his brain worm is a bigger fan of early 1990s hip-hop, but either way, they took notice of Mix-a-Lot’s culinary preferences. In early versions of the government’s “food pyramid,” rice was prioritized as a healthy staple of American diets; yet in the updated version recently unveiled by Kennedy’s Department of Health and Human Services, grains (like rice) have dropped below meats and vegetables, deemed “essential” to a healthier diet. Evidently, under the previous guidelines, too many of America’s babies had back.
Immediately, health experts jumped on HHS’s new inverted pyramid. “I’m very disappointed in the new pyramid that features red meat and saturated fat sources at the very top, as if that’s something to prioritize,” said Christopher Gardner of Stanford University. “It does go against decades and decades of evidence and research.”
Others, like science journalist and nutrition expert Nina Teicholz, greeted the inverted pyramid as long overdue: “Shift grains to the top of the pyramid and place nutrient-dense foods — eggs, fish, meat, and regular dairy — at their rightful place at the base. Children should be served eggs for breakfast, not sugar-laden Lucky Charms and nonfat milk.”
Yet the nutritional experts’ argument over what belongs in the food pyramid obscures the real issue: Isn’t it moronic for the government to have a food pyramid?
The idea that the federal government should play a role in determining the food we eat only serves to stroke the egos of those who believe nothing worthwhile happens in the world without bureaucratic approval. What types of diets best serve individual citizens is one of the most-studied topics in human history, and most of that analysis has been conducted by private actors. There are infinite apps, websites, chat rooms, TikTok videos, workout plans, and the like that will get you where you want to go on your fitness journey, all thankfully operating outside the walls of the Department of Health and Human Services.
Leaving nutritional advice to a federal bureaucracy naturally politicizes its recommendations. It makes no sense that the health benefits of certain foods either increase or decrease depending on whom Americans elect as president and which people get appointed to head HHS.
Virtually nobody actually follows the government’s nutritional guidelines, and for good reason. The food pyramid has historically offered up politicized science, recommending foods grown by favored agricultural groups.
And to date, the science has frequently been wrong. As researchers from the Cato Institute have noted, the government first began offering nutritional advice in the late 1970s, when it was believed that cholesterol and saturated fats were leading to a rise in heart disease in American adults — a theory that drew skeptics as far back as the late 1950s. The government’s answer was to urge people to eat more carbohydrates, which would influence both federal agricultural policy and American diets for years to come. (As the Cato authors note, in 2015, cholesterol was ruled out as a “nutrient of concern for overconsumption,” bringing foods like eggs and shellfish back to the culinary party.)
And yet, at the same time it was dishing out questionable nutritional advice and passing it off as the final word, the federal government was engaging in practices that actively made Americans less healthy. For instance, corn subsidies meant to help farmers incentivized them to overproduce their crops, leading to more foods and drinks containing high-fructose corn syrup. (This was also aided by corn lobbyists urging higher tariffs on sugar imports, making corn syrup the cheaper, and thus more profitable, alternative.)
One 2016 study by researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Emory University found that the food most heavily subsidized by the government was also the least healthy for us.
“Higher consumption of calories from subsidized food commodities was associated with a greater probability of some cardiometabolic risks,” the study’s authors concluded. For the people who consumed the most calories from subsidized foods, they found a higher probability of both obesity and unhealthy blood glucose levels (which raises the risk of type 2 diabetes).
In fact, the government still relies on the laughable body-mass index (BMI) standard, which takes one’s height and weight and cranks out a number to determine whether the subject is in a healthy range. The National Institutes of Health notes that BMI is just “one piece of the puzzle,” but until recently, a muscular, 5-foot-9, 200-pound NFL running back and a doughy political columnist with the same dimensions were considered in the same fitness range. (Come to think of it, let’s go with that.)
Remember nearly a decade ago, when the federal government began requiring restaurants to start posting caloric information on their menus? Since then, American health hasn’t improved, simply proving that the mandate is a meaningless added cost for businesses. These caloric warnings only serve to make meals more miserable, slathering a healthy serving of guilt on top of your roast beef sandwich.
Further, when the government helps the poor purchase groceries, it gives recipients an incentive to buy junk food. In 2021, a study by the USDA found that both men and women enrolled in the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly food stamps) had higher obesity rates than low-income men and women who weren’t on the program. When the government subsidizes something, it gets more of it, and in this case, taxpayer money is being spent on candy bars, potato chips, and soda. (Which ultimately leads to higher spending needs for health care.)
So the government is often working at cross-purposes when dictating to us what we should eat, and some of the ideological positions are surprising. Of course, we all know the vegan hippies want nothing more than to slap a forkful of delicious prime rib right out of our hands. But Republican states are now beginning to ban privately owned businesses from selling lab-grown meat, which, if it turns out to be a viable alternative, could keep the cost of beef down for consumers.
According to RFK Jr.’s new food pyramid, he wants more people to eat lean meat, which labs may one day be able to produce. And yet, oddly, he has supported bans on such foods, which could make his nutritional guidelines even more expensive to follow.
RFK Jr. is not a scientist or an expert on nutrition or agriculture. (In fact, if you hear him discussing his “harvest,” it might be time to file a complaint with Human Resources.) Even if he did know what he was talking about, it is the height of arrogance for the government — whether this one or its predecessors — to believe it has a monopoly on dietary information for a nation of almost 350 million people who can make nutritional decisions on their own.
Skepticism of food snobs dates back even to the nation’s founding. When trying to protect us from rule by members of the British monarchy (presumably like Sir Mix-a-Lot), Thomas Jefferson warned that “were the government to prescribe to us our medicine and diet, our bodies would be in such keeping as our souls are now.” It was not a positive assessment.
Clearly, the author of the Declaration of Independence wanted to emancipate Americans from food nags. We should all thank Jefferson for seeking to protect our rights to life, liberty, and the happiness of the occasional 3 a.m. burrito.