At the same time, some nutrition experts have criticized the prominent placement given in the guidelines to beef and beef tallow \u2014 foods that are not only higher in saturated fat<\/a>, but also more expensive than chicken and plant-based sources of protein like beans and tofu. <\/p>\n Both camps have valid points, according to food economists and nutrition experts who spoke with STAT. Overall, the MAHA agenda of eschewing ultra-processed foods is an affordable one, said Masters, a professor at Tufts University. \u201cWhen you choose the least expensive options in food groups to meet dietary needs, you go with whole foods,\u201d he said. Plain dairy products, canned beans, and tinned fish pack a lot of nutrients at a relatively low cost. <\/p>\n On the other hand, Masters noted, the pyramid also features pricey shrimp and ribeye steak at a time when beef prices are <\/a>up 16 percent from a year ago. And the guidelines\u2019 recommendations that people more than double their protein intake<\/a> compared to previous standards would likely increase spending, said Joelle Johnson, deputy director for healthy food access at the Center for Science in the Public Interest. <\/p>\n \u201cThat recommendation, along with choosing higher-fat dairy, would likely have the biggest impact on a person\u2019s food expenses if they were to follow it,\u201d Johnson said via email.<\/p>\n Ultimately, the costs and nutritional impact of the new guidelines vary based not just on where Americans live and shop, but how each individual might interpret the new guidelines. Still, as a thought exercise, STAT found a food economist and registered dietician who used Masters\u2019 spreadsheet to calculate the costs of a couple versions of a MAHA diet \u2014 both financially and nutritionally. To understand the results, it\u2019s helpful to take a step back to explain what nutrition experts mean when they talk about affordability, and why it matters for Americans\u2019 health.<\/p>\n What affordable food really means in the US<\/p>\n Food prices are up 27 percent compared to five years ago, said Michigan State University food economist David Ortega. Forces including the COVID-19 pandemic<\/a>, bird flu<\/a>, droughts<\/a>, tariffs<\/a>, Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine<\/a>, and flesh-eating screwworms<\/a>, among others, have all combined to increase the cost of beef, eggs, and other sundries. <\/p>\n Prices today aren\u2019t rising as much as they were. But economists don\u2019t expect grocery bills to go back to pre-pandemic levels, since generally, the prices consumers pay aren\u2019t out of line with the costs of production. <\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019re expensive because labor, rent, and [other costs] are expensive,\u201d said Masters. <\/p>\n What a person considers affordable will depend on their income. In the US in 2023, the lowest-income households spent about $14 a day on food, while middle-class households spent $25 and the highest-income households spent $47, according to government data<\/a>. People on food benefits<\/a>, meanwhile, receive an average $6 a day per person to spend on food.<\/p>\n Affordability is also about more than how much you pay at the grocery store, say nutrition experts.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen you\u2019re trying to assess the cost of whether people can afford food, the most important is the time cost\u201d \u2014 how much time people spend planning meals, acquiring ingredients, and preparing them, said Jerold Mande, who worked as a policymaker under three presidential administrations and currently heads the nonprofit Nourish Science. <\/p>\n A one-pound bag of dried chickpeas, for example, is nutritious and costs less than $1.50 at Walmart. But before they\u2019re ready to eat, they have to be soaked for at least an hour (some prefer overnight), then cooked a couple hours on the stove over low heat, then combined with other ingredients \u2014 presumably ones that require some preparation of their own \u2014 into a complete dish. <\/p>\n It\u2019s true that there are plenty of nutritious meals that can be prepared relatively cheaply and quickly. But it\u2019s also easy to see why a busy family juggling work, school, and childcare might grab some frozen pizza instead. <\/p>\n \u201cMaybe a meal can cost three dollars, that\u2019s not inherently a wrong statement,\u201d said Ortega. \u201cBut those types of calculations often rely on best-case scenarios that don\u2019t reflect how many households actually eat.\u201d <\/p>\n Amelia Finaret, a clinical dietician and food economist at Allegheny College, notes that there\u2019s another, less direct concern when it comes to affordability: <\/p>\n \u201cSometimes, more affordable items don\u2019t taste as good to us, such as the difference between fresh and canned vegetables, which could make it less enticing to include our vegetables if we need to go with the more affordable option.\u201d <\/p>\n All this means that in the fight against chronic disease, diets that are affordable as well as nutritious are a key part of the equation. <\/p>\n The cost of MAHA\u2019s new protein recommendations<\/p>\n Many experts cheered the guidelines\u2019 strong stance against ultra-processed foods, with Masters praising the administration\u2019s apparent willingness to stand up to major food manufacturers. There are other bright spots, too. The new food pyramid features a bag of frozen peas. Frozen vegetables are often cheaper than their fresh counterparts.<\/p>\n On the other hand, Finaret worries about people spending money on protein they don\u2019t need<\/a>. <\/p>\n \u201cMost adults who are not critically ill and who are not elderly and losing muscle mass don\u2019t need more than about 0.8-1 gram per kilogram of body weight,\u201d she said. The new guidelines recommend 1.2-1.6 grams of protein per day per kilogram of body weight. (For a 150-pound person, that would be 109 grams of protein at the high end of the range, equivalent to about 18 eggs or four chicken breasts.) <\/p>\n But unlike fats or carbohydrates, \u201cwe can\u2019t really store protein in our bodies,\u201d Finaret said. \u201cI don\u2019t know where all this protein is going to go or why you would buy it, because it seems pretty wasteful.\u201d <\/p>\n Eating by the new food pyramid<\/p>\n Finaret was game to test out the new MAHA guidelines using Masters\u2019 spreadsheet, which tallies up the cost per day of a diet that aims to meet daily recommendations for nutrients like protein, fat, fiber, and calcium. It\u2019s based on online grocery prices at Stop & Shop in Boston, which he often used as a classroom exercise for helping his students at Tufts University understand the costs of adequate nutrition. <\/p>\n In designing two versions of a daily diet for a 30-year-old woman, Finaret explained, \u201cI tried to meet the new protein guidelines and have two servings of fruit, three servings [of] veggie, and three servings [of] whole grains, just like the new pyramid advises.\u201d<\/p>\n For her first version, she said, she wasn\u2019t trying to keep costs as low as possible \u2014 just choosing foods she thought she\u2019d like to eat. She included servings of beef and blueberries, and aimed for about 90 grams of protein based on the new recommendations. She also chose chicken breasts over the cheaper chicken thighs. Her total cost per day: $8.59. The second time, she tried to keep costs down as much as she could while staying within the guidelines\u2019 recommendations. She chose canned tuna and chicken thighs, apples and bananas, frozen peas, cabbage, and canned green beans. Total cost: $5.08.<\/p>\n Nutritionally, Finaret said, there was at least one big problem. She wasn\u2019t getting enough energy (she\u2019d need around 2,300 calories) to maintain her body weight. \u201cTwo to four servings of grain is insufficient,\u201d she said. \u201cI don\u2019t think people know how small a serving of grains is\u201d \u2014 equivalent to one slice of bread, or six Triscuits.<\/p>\n The more expensive diet did a better job of meeting her micronutrient needs, though vitamin E and calcium were still pretty low.<\/p>\n Overall, Finaret wouldn\u2019t recommend that her patients adhere strictly to the new guidelines, especially because of their emphasis on animal proteins and her concerns about relying too much on produce rather than whole grains for fiber. Also, she said, \u201cI wouldn\u2019t be able to ask my patients to spend that much money.\u201d If one person is spending $8.58 on food each day, she said, for a family of five, that\u2019s $300 a week. That\u2019s a lot for people on a budget. <\/p>\n The good news, she said, is that most people can spend less food and have healthier diets in the process, particularly if they focus on plant-based proteins like beans. That\u2019s especially true if people stop spending so much money on unnecessary supplements and alcohol. Notably, the new guidelines actually feature weaker language<\/a> about limiting alcohol consumption. <\/p>\n The upshot, according to Masters, is that some parts of MAHA\u2019s new guidelines are both affordable and nutritious, and some aren\u2019t. <\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s a characteristic feature of the movement, \u201c he said, \u201cwhere it\u2019s rebelling and declining to follow consensus. Sometimes that provides a breakthrough that\u2019s really helpful, and sometimes it\u2019s just incorrect.\u201d <\/p>\n STAT\u2019s coverage of chronic health issues is supported by a grant from Bloomberg Philanthropies<\/a>. Our financial supporters<\/a> are not involved in any decisions about our journalism.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. For…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":562128,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[5672,245445,57583,32720,446,109482,98542,279,210,30923,42229,6201,2036,587,1182,270,80,33106,5207,881,5620,15010,47435,245446,277,67,132,68,2969,2058],"class_list":{"0":"post-562127","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nutrition","8":"tag-administration","9":"tag-baby-formula","10":"tag-beef-tallow","11":"tag-dc","12":"tag-donald","13":"tag-fries","14":"tag-froot-loops","15":"tag-gop","16":"tag-health","17":"tag-health-and-human-services","18":"tag-hhs","19":"tag-maha","20":"tag-measles","21":"tag-north-america","22":"tag-nutrition","23":"tag-oil","24":"tag-politics","25":"tag-potus","26":"tag-president","27":"tag-public-health","28":"tag-republicans","29":"tag-robert-f-kennedy-jr","30":"tag-secretary","31":"tag-sugars","32":"tag-trump","33":"tag-united-states","34":"tag-unitedstates","35":"tag-us","36":"tag-usa","37":"tag-washington"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116003946027531931","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/562127","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=562127"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/562127\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/562128"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=562127"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=562127"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=562127"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Secretary](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/JCKNRG64HTL5GOHZIJT664PRXQ.jpg\")
Secretary of Health and Human Service Robert F. Kennedy Jr. spoke about new dietary guidelines during a briefing for reporters at the White House in Washington on Jan. 7.ERIC LEE\/NYT<\/p>\n