RFK Jr.’s new food pyramid could be a disaster for the environment — if Americans actually follow it

The Trump administration announced last week that it wants Americans to consume more protein, churning out a colorful illustration of an inverted food pyramid that prominently features a big, red steak, a wedge of cheese, and a carton of whole milk at the top and claiming it’s “ending the war on protein.” It may seem like another example of cartoonish propaganda from an administration that essentially runs on memes, but don’t be fooled: It signals a marked turn from previous advice that encouraged Americans to limit high-fat sources of protein like red meat and whole milk for their health, which can incidentally also curb planet-heating pollution from the beef and dairy industries.

“The milk mustache is back,” says an X post from the US Department of Agriculture showing an image of President Donald Trump sporting one while leaning over a glass of milk.

There’s been plenty of debate over how fair it is to judge individual consumers for the carbon footprint of food systems, especially when a person’s choices might be limited. Plus, the environmental impact of what we eat depends a lot on the way industries conduct their business, experts tell The Verge. Besides, the US stopped using the food pyramid as an official guide in 2011, and survey data shows Americans don’t follow federal nutritional recommendations anyway. But if the Trump administration’s new dietary guidelines actually result in real changes to American food production and diets, that could wind up leading to more of the pollution that exacerbates climate change.

“I’m kind of a big believer in it all matters because at the end of the day, it is true that every action matters, and every ton of greenhouse gas omitted or not omitted matters,” says Richard Waite, director for agriculture initiatives at the nonprofit World Resources Institute (WRI).

Waite and his team estimated the hypothetical climate impact of Americans eating more protein in accordance with the updated federal guidelines. The Trump administration raised the recommendation to roughly 1.2–1.6 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight per day (about 0.54–0.73 grams per pound of body weight per day). Already, Americans eat about 1.0–1.3 grams per day — within the lower range of the new recommendations. However, if they moved up to the higher end of that range, that would be about a 25 percent increase in protein consumption.

WRI estimates that such an increase in Americans eating any kind of protein, whether it comes from animal or plant sources, could require up to 100 million acres of additional agricultural land each year, roughly as big as the state of California. The climate impact of that could be equivalent to hundreds of millions of tons of additional carbon dioxide emissions, according to WRI.

Waite is quick to caution that this is a thought experiment. Federal surveys show that American diets don’t align with recommendations for most food groups and nutrients, in part because folks are eating away from home more often, and those meals on the go are typically less nutritious. The cost and availability of healthy foods, including fresh fruits and vegetables, can also be a stumbling block.

The environmental impact of a meal varies depending on what sources of protein people eat. Cattle and other hoofed animals with similar digestive systems like sheep and goats are a bigger concern than chicken or plant-based proteins. Protein from meat requires more land for raising animals and growing their feed. Cows have a digestive process that’s less efficient at turning feed into food humans can eat. They also belch methane, a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide even though it’s shorter-lived in the atmosphere.

Fortunately, there are a lot of nuances that are likely to prevent a big rise in greenhouse gas emissions from protein consumption, according to Frank Mitloehner, a professor at the University of California, Davis Department of Animal Science. Americans have actually been eating a lot more chicken recently, while US consumption of beef has been relatively stable over the past decade. And even if the Trump administration is advising people to drink whole milk, it doesn’t necessarily have a larger climate impact than lower-fat alternatives, according to Mitloehner.

The important question to consider, for Mitloehner, is whether herd sizes will grow and agriculture will begin producing more beef and dairy. That’s unlikely in the near term, he says, considering the industry is already struggling to meet existing demand in the US. Heat waves and drought have cut herd sizes, and beef and dairy producers are on alert for potentially devastating screwworm parasites that have already been documented in Mexico near the US border.

“Many of the producers who have left the industry will not come back,” Mitloehner says. “And there’s no international supplier who can just fill that void.”

The number of cattle in the US has reached record-low levels. In part, that reflects big efficiency gains in how much meat and dairy you can produce from a single animal. Fewer than 90 million cattle are needed today to get the same amount of beef produced by 140 million cattle in the 1970s, according to UC Davis. The industry can raise an animal much faster today as a result of genetic and nutritional changes. Certain types of feed can even reduce the amount of methane a cow releases in its belches.

Many ranchers are still working to keep up those gains in efficiency and climate impact, at least in California, Mitloehner says. The Trump administration, on the other hand, is rolling back greenhouse gas pollution regulations and calling any efforts to address the effects of climate change — such as the heat and drought stressing cattle — a “green scam” while trying to bury previous federal research on the issue.

Some scientists and health and environmental advocates also now accuse President Trump and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. of ignoring a previous scientific panel’s recommendations for the dietary guidelines. An “uncompromised” version of the new guidelines based on the most recent recommendations from the federal Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee (DGAC) would have advised Americans to “increase intake of beans, peas, lentils, nuts, seeds, and soy products and decrease intake of red and processed meat,” according to a report from the Center for Science in the Public Interest and the Center for Biological Diversity.

The federal guidelines are updated every five years, and reflected most of DGAC’s advice back in 2020. This time around, the Trump administration rejected more than half of DGAC’s 2024 recommendations, according to the Center for Science in the Public Interest. And several of the panelists involved in crafting this year’s guidelines disclosed financial ties to the beef and dairy industries. The existence of the Trump administration’s new scientific review panel and its industry ties was first reported by Stat News.

“Who selected them, why they were selected, and by what authority is anyone’s guess. [It] raises serious questions,” says Matthew Hayek, an associate professor at New York University’s Department of Environmental Studies. The Trump administration says in its supplementary analysis for the guidelines that “subject matter experts were selected through a federal contracting process based on demonstrated expertise,” a point that it reiterated in an email to The Verge.

The guidelines also reflect RFK’s promotion of cooking with beef tallow, a hallmark of the “Make America Healthy Again” attack on seed oils despite decades of scientific evidence showing the health benefits of cooking with plant-based oils rather than tallow, butter, and lard high in saturated fats. Seed oils have gotten a bad rap because they’re often used in ultra-processed foods, guilt by association that’s added to the growing hype around cooking with beef tallow. The American Heart Association put out a statement last week warning that consuming tallow is linked to higher cardiovascular risk (while also commending the new federal guidelines for advising people to limit highly processed foods and added sugars).

As the Trump administration takes a wrecking ball to federal science institutions and cherry-picks research it uses, Hayek says Americans can still rely on recommendations that are based on scientific consensus from the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics and the American Heart Association.

While most Americans don’t follow federal nutritional guidelines closely anyway, some big institutions do, Hayek notes, including federal nutrition programs. “If followed by even a few large institutions like our public school systems, [that] will serve to increase the greenhouse gas emissions and potentially decrease the health of American diets,” he says. “Individuals are also a product of the institutions that they engage with every day.”