RFK Jr. just flipped the food pyramid to create a funnel of performative masculinity

New dietary guidelines announced Wednesday by Health and Human Services Secretary RFK Jr. crank up the dials on red meat and full-fat dairy. The now-inverted food pyramid prominently features a steak, an entire chicken, and whole milk up top, relegating carbs to the bottom point—minor real estate compared to the portion they occupied before. Untethered from scientific research, the new recommendations seem more aligned with a burgeoning source of dietary advice: hypermasculine influencers.

The fairly recent obsession with protein isn’t limited to men. “Protein has sort of become like a default or de facto good food, because it hasn’t been vilified in the same way that these other nutrients have,” says Charlotte Biltekoff, a professor at UC Davis who studies food and culture. It’s a buzzword in wellness corners around the internet. Yet the new guidelines basically ignore menopause influencers discussing the benefits of cottage cheese in favor of the red-meat-forward “manosphere.”

Protein-maxxing obsessives can be found throughout MAGAville, ranging from Joe Rogan and Jordan Peterson—with his “all beef” diet—to the so-called Liver King. Alongside fitness shakes and supplement powders, these kinds of dudes are often peddling the notion that a high-protein diet is essential for masculinity.

The association of gender with certain foods isn’t new, but the wholehearted embrace of these perceptions is a more recent phenomenon, says Elaine Power, a dietician and professor at Queen’s University who studies food, gender, and health. In studies about a decade ago, when people were asked if they thought foods were gendered, they’d say no, “but then you show them a salad, and they say, of course that’s women’s food. You show them a steak, and that’s men’s food.”

Her subjects, in other words, would initially deny that such perceptions existed. However, Power says she’s not sure she’d get that result if she repeated the experiment today.

And these perceptions affect what men eat. A 2023 study titled “Healthful Eating as a Manhood Threat” found that men often avoid foods viewed as feminine, often favoring meat. This seems to have particularly affected young men, a greater proportion of whom—recent research suggests—have been eating meat daily and taking protein supplements. When asked why, many cited their desire for a more muscular physique, the baseline of the aesthetics advertised by macho influencers—some of the most notable of whom have been embroiled in steroid controversies.

The ripped physiques influencers use to hawk carnivorous diets are hard to come by, of course, and consuming extra protein is often completely unnecessary. “Most of us eat, actually, way too much protein,” Power says. “I do worry about the longer term health impacts of these kinds of recommendations.”

Besides being terrible for the climate, excessive meat consumption has negative health effects, including an increased risk of cancer and heart disease, even in young people. While the American Heart Association praised the new pyramid’s suggestions to limit highly processed foods, the group stated its disagreement with the emphasis on meat and RFK’s aim of “ending the war on saturated fats.”

The contents of the pyramid are simply recommendations, with little to no direct policy influence. They may eventually be used to redesign school and other institutional lunches, but right now, “there’s no little to no infrastructure to act on this kind of dietary advice,” Biltekoff says. What’s more, the admonition to avoid processed foods and eat home-cooked meals are inaccessible to many.

“This is just another set of ideals that become moralized,” Biltekoff says. “Eating real food becomes a part of identity and status, and it becomes a way of signaling or symbolizing certain kinds of class-based and race-based identities and reinforcing social hierarchies rather than addressing them.”

And to the boys and men in the thrall of protein-maxxing, these new guidelines are just an affirmation that they’re headed in the right direction.