Robert F. Kennedy Jr. unveiled his new dietary guidelines Wednesday during a White House press briefing. Kennedy, an anti-vaccine activist who doesn’t believe in germ theory, is often called a quack—a slang term for a huckster merely posing as a medical professional. And it seems like Kennedy has either embraced the idea that he’s a quack or he’s just a big fan of ducks. The Health Secretary’s ringtone interrupted his announcement with quacks.
Stepping up to the podium to answer a question about the new childhood vaccine schedule, Kennedy started to talk before his phone began quacking, as you can see in the video clip below.
“I mean, my hope is that we release these… earlier… only two days earlier,” Kennedy said, stumbling over his words. “I’m sorry,” Kennedy continued, reaching for his phone as the quacking started.
“Duck is also high in protein,” Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins joked to laughter in the White House press briefing room.
The entire room continued laughing as Dr. Mehmet Oz, the head of the agency that oversees Medicare and Medicaid, sought to help out Kennedy by taking his phone and silencing the noise.
The new nutrition guidelines are a radical departure from previous food pyramids. Kennedy remarked that it might look upside down compared to what people are familiar with. That’s because it prioritizes foods like whole milk, butter, red meat, and whole fruits and vegetables. It also warns against highly processed foods.
The new guidelines appear on the government website realfood.gov, and while some of the changes will be celebrated, others will raise some eyebrows among nutritionists. Americans have long been advised to avoid eating too much red meat and saturated fats. The new recommendations flip all of that on its head, putting a particular emphasis on animal-based protein over plant protein.
As the New York Times notes, the new guidelines say Americans should consume between 1.2 and 1.6 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight per day. The old recommendation was 0.8 grams per kilogram of body weight per day.
The new guidelines recommend Americans eat three servings of full-fat dairy products a day, a departure from longtime guidance from health experts that lower-fat dairy products are better.
Another odd change to the nutrition guidelines involves alcohol. The new recommendation only says that Americans should consume “less alcohol for better overall health.” Previously, the recommendation was that men have no more than two alcohol drinks per day and women have no more than one per day.
Nutrition experts who help shape the government’s food pyramid didn’t take a hard stance on ultra-processed foods last year, according to the Washington Post, because there isn’t a clear definition of what that means. And while some experts have said that was overly cautious, others warn that overcorrecting the other way, as Kennedy has with the new guidelines, means that some foods like bread and yogurt are demonized, as the Post notes.
Kennedy’s Make America Healthy Again movement may be happy about some of the changes, but will likely be disappointed by what’s not there. The MAHA Report on Substack wrote Tuesday that they expected the new guidelines to include a note that explicitly acknowledges seed oils as an ultra-processed food. That didn’t happen.
