Most of us don’t need a chart to tell us the old food pyramid didn’t work.
We followed it. For a long time.
And during those same years, chronic disease didn’t improve. Cancer didn’t retreat. Metabolic health didn’t get better. That doesn’t mean food causes cancer. That’s too simplistic, and it’s not accurate.
But I think we can agree that food shapes the internal environment we live in every day. And that environment matters more than we used to think.
So when this new food pyramid was released, I saw it as a long-overdue and very important correction.
Cancer Has A Way of Sneaking Up
For those of us who have heard those dreaded words, “you have cancer,” it often hits us out of the blue. And it rarely shows up with one clear cause you can circle in red.
Instead, it builds over time. Ask anyone who’s lived through it — myself included.
And it’s often the little things that add up.
• Inflammation that never quite calms down.
• Blood sugar that’s not addressed.
• Hormones out-of-control.
• Cells working overtime to repair themselves without the compounds they need.
Food plays an important role in all of that.
The old pyramid guideline pushed food groups that kept insulin elevated, minimized protein, and leaned heavily on refined carbohydrates. Over time, that combination creates a biological environment that’s simply harder to defend.
This new pyramid takes us in the opposite direction.
A Word About Fat: It Was Never the Problem
For years, fat took the blame for just about everything. We were told to cut it, fear it, and replace it with something “healthier.”
What we didn’t see coming was what happens when the body goes without it. Systems lose their rhythm. Inflammation becomes harder to settle. Healing slows down.
Undernourished cells don’t thrive. They just get by.
In lab and animal studies, high-fat, low-carb diets appear to change the body’s fuel supply in a way that makes life harder for many tumors. Less sugar for them to feed on. More ketones for the body to run on. And in some cases, slower tumor growth.
It’s not a cure. And it’s not a guarantee. But it does support something I’ve believed for a long time — when you change the internal environment, you change the odds. And feeding the body well may be one of the most powerful ways to make that environment less welcoming to disease.
Real Food Helps the Body Clear What It’s Exposed To
Prevention isn’t just about avoiding what’s “bad.” It’s also about whether the body can handle what it encounters.
We live in a very different world than our grandparents did. More chemicals. More pollutants. More things the human body wasn’t designed to process without help.
That help comes from nutrients — amino acids, fats, minerals — the kinds of things real food provides.
When diets become too refined, those tools quietly disappear.
This new pyramid brings them back.
Bottom Line
For the first time in a long time, the advice coming from the top is starting to match what many of us have learned through experience. A well-fed body tends to function better than a stressed or restricted one.
This new food pyramid could shape how our children and grandchildren eat for years to come.
Related articles:
Is a Restaurant Considered “Healthy” Just Because They Use Tallow?
Fight Cancer With The Colors On Your Plate
How Our Modern American Diet Fuels Our Risk of Cancer
Resources:
U.S. Department of Agriculture, Kennedy, Rollins Unveil Historic Reset of U.S. Nutrition Policy, Put Real Food Back at Center of Health, press release, January 7, 2026, https://www.usda.gov/about-usda/news/press-releases/2026/01/07/kennedy-rollins-unveil-historic-reset-us-nutrition-policy-put-real-food-back-center-health.
Zhao Y, Li Y, Wang W, Song Z, Zhuang Z, Li D, Qi L, Huang T. Low-carbohydrate diets, low-fat diets, and mortality in middle-aged and older people: A prospective cohort study. J Intern Med. 2023 Aug;294(2):203-215. doi: 10.1111/joim.13639. Epub 2023 May 3. PMID: 37132226.
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