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THE PRIVATIZATION OF REGULATION  
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Jeff Hagan
January 16, 2026
In The Public Interest
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_ Can industry insiders make America healthy again? _

Silkscreen poster created by NYC WPA War Services, [between 1941 and
1943] “promoting consumption of healthy foods, showing dairy
products (milk, cheese), eggs, fruit, vegetables, bread and cereal,
and meat.”, Library of Congress

 

Although the “food pyramid” of nutrition recommendations is
practically ancient at this point, the memory of it persists,
especially in Americans of a certain age–say, the age of Robert F.
Kennedy, Jr., the secretary of health. 

So it’s no surprise that when an advisory group under his command
came along to revise U.S. guidelines on nutrition toward his branded
goal to “Make America Healthy Again,” it positioned its
recommendation in reference to it, satisfying the RFK’s appetite for
radical change by claiming to upend the food pyramid.

Even the _New York Times_ bought into the narrative:

“In a striking reversal of past nutrition guidance, the Trump
administration released new dietary guidelines
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pyramid on its head, putting steak, cheese and whole milk near the
top.”

But the U.S. hasn’t deployed the food pyramid for two decades, and
the visual “flipping” is an optical delusion: the wide part of the
triangle, whether at the top or the bottom, always indicated _more_,
as in, eat more of this, and the point of the triangle contained what
to eat less of. Since 2011, the federal guidelines–which provide the
foundation for dozens of federal feeding programs and serve a public
education function–have used a different approach and graphic:
MyPlate.

Dr. Jessica Knurick, a dietician who holds a PhD in nutrition science
and produces a newsletter on Substack
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and videos on social media, explains why the more recent
recommendations were referenced in a recent column.

“It would be hard to market a “reset” if the public understood
what the previous guidelines actually said. So instead, they’re just
pretending MyPlate never existed.

“Which is evident right at the top of the new dietary guidelines
website [[link removed]], which opens with the 1992 food
pyramid and the words “For decades we’ve been misled by guidance
that prioritized highly processed food, and are now facing rates of
unprecedented chronic disease.” This is, of course, inaccurate and
textbook historical revisionism. It takes thirty years of complex
nutrition policy and turns it into a simple bad guy, pins America’s
health crisis on a graphic that has not been used in two decades, and
lets the actual causes of chronic disease completely off the hook.

Dr. Knurick points out that, despite the big announcement, the
recommendations actually repeat many of the same as previous
administrations (for instance: although Kennedy announced an end to
the “war on saturated fats,” it seems more like a surrender, since
in the new guidelines, the percentage remains the same, at ten). 

Both old and new versions say to consume a variety of protein
sources–animal and plant. 

But here, she points out, is where their words and their graphic
differ: animal protein and and fat take up a large portion at the top
and plant proteins are “largely absent.”  

“The obvious takeaway for anyone looking at that image,” she says,
“is to eat a lot of animal protein.”

So what’s behind that? 

Could it be that six of the nine dietary review authors
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who wrote the report–after the administration scrapped the
original_Scientific Report of the 2025 Dietary Guidelines Advisory
Committee_
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have ties to the meat and dairy industry?

It’s hard to say for certain. But the idea of industries themselves
being the source of guidelines and regulations of their own
industries–whether because leaders from industry were recruited to
head regulatory agencies or sit on government panels or because
regulations were replaced by “voluntary standards”–naturally
feeds suspicion: Are the nutrition guidelines, for instance, tainted
by the appearance of influence? That alone is a solid reason to
broaden the inputs and widen the sources behind the regulations.

By privatizing regulation, the administration outsources one of the
most important roles government should have: protecting the health and
safety of its citizens. It calls into question who is at the top of
this particular pyramid–the people, or powerful corporations?

 

_Jeff Hagen is a writer from Cleveland, Ohio. For 14 years he was
editor of the alumni magazine for his alma mater, Oberlin College. He
previously held communication positions for the Center on Urban
Poverty and Community Development at Case Western Reserve University
and, before that, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum._

 

I_N THE PUBLIC INTEREST is a national nonprofit research and policy
organization that studies public goods and services. We help community
organizations, advocacy groups, public officials, researchers, and the
general public understand how the privatization of public goods
impacts service quality, democracy, equity, and government budgets._

We also advocate for strengthening, adequately funding, and building
popular support for a government that works for _all of us_.

* Food Pyramid
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* privitazation
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* Department of Health and Human Services
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* nutrition
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