You're listening to Life Kit from NPR.

Hey, it's Mariel.

The federal government updates its dietary guidelines every five years.

And I don't know if you heard, but we got a new food pyramid.

And guess what?

It says that you can eat as much steak and cheese as you want.

Just kidding.

Not actually.

But sort of.

The guidelines are confusing that way.

You know, on one hand, you've got the secretary who has like a personal philosophy of eating.

On the other hand, you have the science. And in this

document and in the release of the new guidelines with this pyramid, you see kind of the clashes,

the mashups. This is Alison Aubrey, a longtime health correspondent at NPR. When she says the secretary,

she's talking about the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

On this episode of Life Kit, I talked to Allison about the new food pyramid, the written guidelines, and what they both say about red meat, saturated fat, highly processed carbs, and alcohol.

Allison has interviewed lots of nutrition experts on this topic, so she will also tell us

what they say. By the way, when we talk about these guidelines, I want to acknowledge they may not

be the first place your average American is going to go when deciding what to eat, but they are

important. The dietary guidelines provide kind of the scientific foundation for federal nutrition programs.

So they're guiding standards for school lunch, for programs like WIC and SNAP, for military meals.

Basically, they dictate the types and the composition of foods served in these government feeding programs.

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