Food & Nutrition

A 2,000-Calorie Menu Plan for the Upside-Down Food Pyramid

It’s possible to enjoy meat and dairy while staying under the 2025 Dietary Guidelines’ 10 percent saturated fat cap.
A 2,000-Calorie Menu Plan for the Upside-Down Food Pyramid
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Jingduan Yang
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You can enjoy grass-fed beef, whole-fat Greek yogurt, and dark chocolate—all in the same day—while following the 2025 Dietary Guidelines for Americans. With what nutrition experts call “fat budgeting,” you can make the guidelines work for you.

The 2025 to 2030 Dietary Guidelines for Americans made headlines by turning the original 1992 food pyramid upside down, placing protein-rich foods and whole-fat dairy at the top. What most people missed is that the decades-old 10 percent cap on saturated fat as a percentage of total daily calories remains firmly in place.
Jingduan Yang
Jingduan Yang
M.D.
Dr. Jingduan Yang is a board-certified psychiatrist and fifth-generation classical Chinese medicine physician whose work bridges Western psychiatry, functional medicine, and ancient healing traditions. He is the creator of the ACES Model of Health and Medicine—a four-dimensional framework spanning anatomy, chemistry, energy, and spirit—and the author of “Facing East” and “Clinical Acupuncture and Ancient Chinese Medicine.” As a principal founder of the Northern School of Medicine and Health Sciences, he advances whole-person care grounded in science, ethics, and humanity.