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At long last, Washington got it right with our new food pyramid.
Flying in the face of Big Food’s packaged and processed garbage, the inverted pyramid released by the USDA and the department of Health and Human Services puts nutrient-dense whole foods — red meat, eggs, whole milk, avocados, olive oil — at the top, where they always belonged.
As someone with a master’s in food studies from NYU and who spent years volunteering with the NYC Office of School Food and Nutrition Services, I’ve seen firsthand how decades of so-called expert advice has wrecked the diet of a generation of kids.
Take the typical school breakfast: nonfat yogurt with 24 grams of added sugar — six teaspoons — all in the name of “healthy eating.”
How did we get there? The 2010 Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act mandated that schools offer only fat-free or 1% milk to reduce saturated fat, phasing out whole milk entirely. The result was more sugar, fewer nutrients and less satiety.
Of course, this was a win for food companies who could sell the same product twice — once as watery blue milk or fat-free yogurt, and once again as butter or cream. Big Food wins, little kids lose.
Around 2018, former Mayor Eric Adams, who was then Brooklyn borough president, supported an initiative to offer healthy scratch-based cooking in all schools. It progressed with promise until the pandemic stalled and ultimately killed it. But now kids have new hope.
Trump’s MAHA White House is ushering in upstream solutions by focusing on preventative rather than curative health policies, and it’s a game-changer from the top. If we stop subsidizing unhealthy foods — corn, soy, canola oil made artificially cheap for decades — we can redirect those resources to foods that actually keep us healthy.
Notice what’s at the top of the new pyramid: nutrient-dense red meat, unprocessed cheese, whole milk, eggs, avocados, fruits and vegetables, olive oil, chicken, fish and nuts. These foods are the foundation of a healthy childhood, creating the building blocks that help kids thrive. Currently, we have soaring rates of food allergies, diabetes and chronic diseases — environmental, not genetic diseases, which are highly preventable. Switching to a whole foods diet can and will make us healthy.
Our grandparents could have told us what to eat. But instead, we trusted doctors educated with a focus on medicalization, not disease prevention, while our ancestors thrived as omnivorous opportunists eating unprocessed, whole foods. Both of my grandmothers were omnivorous opportunists. They lived through tremendous scarcity and one made it to 96 while the other lived to 103. Neither ever ate a takeout meal.
Research studies and corporate-funded experts can never convince me of what I’ve seen in real life.
People who say “look at the research” make me laugh. The research is often funded by food companies with something to sell. It’s nearly impossible to establish causation because diet is correlative — research has shown people who drink diet soda are more likely to smoke, making it hard to tease out which factor causes harm. This ambiguity benefits the purveyors of nefarious products.
We are carnivores and always have been. That doesn’t mean anyone should visit an all-you-can-eat Brazilian steakhouse every night, just that eating animal products is beneficial and your body knows it.
As a cynical New Yorker and former food pyramid heretic, I have seen misinformation peddled about healthy food for decades, and this is the first time I’m genuinely hopeful. We have an unprecedented opportunity to join countries like Japan, the Nordic nations and Greece that eat whole, largely unprocessed diets and have low rates of chronic disease and obesity.
New York City serves nearly one million meals a day through its public schools. That’s enormous purchasing power and an unprecedented opportunity to align with the new federal food pyramid and transform children’s health. Mayor Zohran Mamdani says he’s ushering in a “new era” for New York City. Here’s his chance to prove it by making this his legacy and getting our kids healthy:
● Bring back whole milk immediately. Partner with local dairy farms and ditch the fat-free nonsense.
● Mandate scratch cooking in all NYC schools. Eliminate ultra-processed foods and invest in kitchen infrastructure and training. This creates jobs while feeding kids real food.
● Leverage citywide procurement contracts. Use the city’s massive buying power to support local farms producing nutrient-dense foods — eggs, cheese, grass-fed beef, chicken, fresh vegetables.
● Revamp nutrition education. Teach kids to cook simple, tasty dishes as essential life skills, not electives.
● Eliminate seed oils and artificial additives from all city food vendor contracts. If your great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize it, it shouldn’t be on a school lunch tray.
● Create a farm-to-school pipeline connecting upstate farms directly with city schools and cutting out corporate middlemen.
The federal government gave us the blueprint. Mayor Mamdani, show the country how it’s done. Parents, show your children how it’s done.
Our kids’ health—and our families’ futures—depend on it.
Still, city leadership can only do so much. Parents must step up. Food education starts at home, but many parents don’t know how to cook. Some believe it’s a waste of time. They’re wrong. Cooking is at the heart of living. It is an opportunity to make and model excellent decisions that will follow your children through their entire life.
And gathering around the table to share a meal you prepared together? That builds strong families. It creates connection, conversation and memories that no amount of DoorDash can replace.
Natalya Murakhver is a co-founder of Restore Childhood and director of the documentary “15 DAYS: The Real Story of America’s Pandemic School Closures.”