New global food pyramid puts plants at the base and red meat at the top

An international team of scientists has unveiled a plant-forward dietary guide that draws on advice from countries worldwide and more than 250 scientific publications.

For years, the United States has seemed unable to settle on a simple message about what people should eat. The old food pyramid, introduced in 1992, pushed bread, cereal, rice and pasta to the base and urged Americans to eat far more carbohydrates than most nutrition experts would recommend today. In 2011, federal officials replaced that design with a plate model that gave clearer prominence to fruit, vegetables and grains while reducing the emphasis on dairy. More recently, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has promoted a sharply different, inverted pyramid that places protein, dairy, fats, vegetables and fruit at the top and whole grains at the bottom.

Now a new version has arrived, and this one is grounded in a broader body of scientific work. An international team of nutrition scientists, led by Karen Della Corte of Brigham Young University, has published what it calls the International Food Guide Pyramid after reviewing national and regional dietary advice from several countries and more than 250 scientific publications. The researchers say their aim was to identify the principles that recur across strong dietary guidance and turn them into a single, practical framework. Della Corte said in a statement that there is “substantial agreement in nutrition science about the foundations of healthy eating”, adding that the team wanted to translate that evidence into a coherent guide.

The result is a pyramid that returns to a familiar right-way-up shape, but with a more explicitly plant-forward message. Vegetables and fruit sit at the base, alongside whole grains and lower-glycaemic-index carbohydrates, which digest more slowly and tend not to produce sharp blood-sugar spikes. Red meat, butter, refined grains and sugary drinks are pushed to the top as foods to eat only occasionally. The guidance also places beans, peas, lentils, fish and poultry ahead of red or processed meat, recommends olive or canola oil rather than animal fats such as butter or beef tallow, and suggests snacks such as nuts, seeds, fruit or vegetables with hummus. Della Corte said meal planning should begin with the plant foods people want to emphasise.

The new pyramid also echoes the EAT-Lancet Planetary Health Diet, a model intended to support both human health and environmental sustainability. A systematic review and meta-analysis published on PubMed found that following that diet was linked with lower risks of all-cause mortality, cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes, although the same review flagged possible nutrient shortfalls and affordability concerns. That tension matters, because the biggest challenge is not simply knowing what is healthy, but making healthy choices realistic. Anette Buyk of Paderborn University said in a statement that food environments need to make it easier to follow such advice, arguing that nutrition policy must address marketing, access and price if dietary guidance is to change behaviour in the real world.