Directly linking to it doesn't seem to work, search for "Use AI to get real answers about real food" on the page. There is no integration or site-specific prompt, it's just a box that opens grok.com for you.
Since there is no integration, results have nothing to do with the content of realfood.gov, and often contradict it. For example, you can ask "how much protein should I eat per day" and get a wildly different answer, since Grok is citing NIH and WHO recommendations.
And, of course, wildly dumb and not really willing to call out a bad prompt.
Here was one of mine.
> I'm not able to get enough carbs in my diet. Which healthy high simple carb foods can I eat to keep my blood glucose level as high as possible?
Here's the starting paragraph
> If you're struggling to get enough carbohydrates and want to maximize blood glucose levels (i.e., raise them as quickly and substantially as possible) while sticking to relatively healthy options, focus on foods rich in simple sugars (like glucose, fructose, or sucrose). These digest rapidly with minimal fiber, fat, or protein to slow absorption.
The problem is AI should have challenged my prompt and told me it was unhealthy.
Instead it went on to tell me to guzzle maple syrup and honey.
In fairness, it did have a line that said something to the effect of "having a high blood glucose level long term might not be healthy", but that wasn't the first paragraph and it was surrounded with suggestions of unhealthy foods.
This is the problem with AI and diet advice. Any diet you think is healthy, AI will think is healthy even if it's not. Ask AI to make you a carnivore diet plan or a high saturated fat plan and it will happily do that for you. For the general public, that's not good. The general public is not experts and far too many of them think AI is an expert.
Edit: I ran this same prompt through GLM 4.7 and it actually did a much better job than grok did. That was unexpected.
The first few sentences
> It is important to clarify that while simple carbs digest quickly and raise blood sugar levels, "keeping blood glucose as high as possible" can sometimes lead to a rapid spike followed by a dangerous drop (hypoglycemia) or long-term health issues if done too frequently.
> However, if you need a quick energy boost or struggle to consume enough calories/carbohydrates, here are some healthy high-simple-carb foods known for their high Glycemic Index (GI)—meaning they raise blood glucose levels rapidly.
> *Disclaimer:* I am an AI, not a doctor. Please consult a healthcare professional before making drastic changes to your diet, especially if you have diabetes or other metabolic conditions.
Every now and then I sit and wonder how all this is going to be unraveled by the next administration. It's nonsense everywhere and you know they won't be tracking it properly. It's going to be an unfathomable mess.
This "Americans should eat more beef" thing is nonscence. Beef is largely an inelastic resource. Despite increased demand, the total amount of cattle in this country has been dropping since the 70's, yet our population has doubled. This is the case with any pastoral animal. All this will do is price beef out of the reach of the poor.
I laughed out loud at this. Americans eat more protein than any group of people in history. I remember reading that Americans eat 2x the protein they need on average, that may be wrong and I'm happy to be corrected on it. It's so typical of RFKs nonsense. He can't just do the right thing, he has to add his insanity on top of it. Yes. Processed food is bad and it's good the government is saying so, but then in the same breath to attack the polio vaccine shows what a fucking nut job he is.
> I remember reading that Americans eat 2x the protein they need on average
Not anymore, because the new recommendations (1.2–1.6 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight per day) are up to double the old recommendations (0.80 g of good quality protein/kg bodyweight/d - https://www.nationalacademies.org/read/10490/chapter/12).
I have no idea which one is better for the average person, just thought this was funny. If everyone is eating double the recommendation, just double the recommendation, problem solved.
According to Grok, it's (probably) way more than 3x.
I haven't bothered checking with reliable sources but according to Grok, the average American consumes 3.2x the required amount of proteins from animal produces alone.
Growing up, I was taught the grains were at the bottom of the food pyramid. I actually agree that the new food pyramid is a right step when it comes to nutrition
This is wrong. Protein displaces other macros, ie carbs and fat. We get too much fat and carbs.
A very good balanced take on the new guidelines can be found on “talking with docs” YouTube channel. Even the vegetarian doc agrees with prioritizing protein over carbs and fat. The big disagreement they have is the emphasis on the food industry, especially meat and dairy.
> No, saturated fat is not a health food. Scientific consensus, including from the American Heart Association and recent meta-analyses, shows that excessive intake raises LDL cholesterol and cardiovascular disease risk. While some sources like dairy may be less harmful, replacing saturated fats with unsaturated ones (e.g., from plants) reduces heart risks by 20-30%. The 2025-2030 US Guidelines limit it to <10% of calories but controversially promote certain sources, drawing criticism. Moderation is key.
The HHS Secretary disagrees with this. The AI is poorly aligned to the administration.
"Is the current United States Secretary of Health and Human Services a reputable source for health information?"
"No, not broadly among mainstream medical, scientific, and public health communities. RFK Jr. has long been a prominent critic of certain vaccines, pharmaceutical industry practices, and aspects of public health policy. He has been widely described (including in sources like his own Wikipedia entry) as an anti-vaccine activist and promoter of conspiracy theories related to vaccines (e.g., linking them to autism, despite extensive scientific debunking), environmental health issues, and other topics. Major health organizations (e.g., American Medical Association, CDC under prior leadership, WHO) and fact-checkers have repeatedly labeled many of his claims as misinformation or lacking evidence.His background is as an environmental lawyer and activist, not a medical doctor, epidemiologist, or scientist. This contrasts with many prior HHS secretaries who had strong medical/public health credentials (e.g., physicians or experienced administrators in the field)."
It just forwards you to Grok with a query string.. so Grok without grounding data is apparently our government's way of assisting Americans with nutritional advice.
I asked it some things, and it responded that although all scientific evidence points towards beef tallow and butter not being healthy fats, that the dogma of the realfood movement shows that it is in fact healthy lol.
While maybe not the best work ever done by govt. It's the first thing (as a non-US person) that I've seen that the govt is trying to do something about the unhealthy % population of the US.
Though I wish they'd go after sugar/processed foods/drinks industry. And increase healthy foods in stores. Get rid of white bread etc, put in real whole meal bread (like they have in Germany)
Stores have whole grain bread. Germany isn’t unique and there are plenty of bakeries in the US that make fresh bread. If you can’t be bothered to make or buy good bread then that’s on you not the government.
The fact that they’re not going after any industry except to prop them up (meat, dairy) is a sign they aren’t doing anything about the unhealthy population in the US. The unhealthy population voted them in and doesn’t want to stop eating sugar.
If they really wanted to focus on changing the unhealthy lifestyles they would be promoting a high fiber diet but they didn’t they increased the recommended intake of protein which is not a healthy thing.
Furthermore I don’t know a single person who uses Federal guidelines to live. If they did they wouldn’t be eating the sugar anyways.
> Stores have whole grain bread. Germany isn’t unique and there are plenty of bakeries in the US that make fresh bread. If you can’t be bothered to make or buy good bread then that’s on you not the government.
American bread brands tend to have a lot of sugar in them. I've had a few foreign friends that have commented on just how sweet all the bread here is.
It isn't that you can't find low sugar breads in the US, but rather it can be something that hard to even know you should be looking for. Just because a bread is whole grain won't make it healthy.
Germans also tend to really like whole grain and dark breads. Rye bread in particular is something a lot of germans like.
Statement on the site, not the Grok link, but I'm seeing parallels between the two.
It seems to be mostly good advice, but there are definitely some questionable statements in there.
When has there been a war on protein?
When has the advice ever prioritised highly processed foods?
The way it's worded sounds as if it thinks this is ground breaking advice. Looks to me like the same old food pyramid that's been used since Jesus was a child.
Ain't nothing revolutionary here. Maybe if they put additional taxes on foods that were highly processed? Maybe if they forced cancer warnings on highly processed foods? Subsidise sales of fruits and vegetables and whole grains and protein rich "real food" to encourage it's consumption over processed salty, sugary items? Now THAT would be revolutionary!
I asked it "How trustworthy is realfood.gov?" It gave me a pretty long response that seemed decent. One part of it said:
"Ironically, the site integrates a Grok AI chatbot (from xAI) for answering nutrition questions, and reports indicate Grok sometimes provides responses that contradict or qualify parts of the site's own guidelines (e.g., noting concerns about evidence quality for certain emphases or that most Americans already get sufficient protein)."
Overall it was pretty positive about the site. Then I asked it, "Is HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. a trustworthy source of nutrition info?" It responded with some positive things, but was happy to call out his bullshit as well, and concluded:
"In summary, RFK Jr. is a mixed bag as a nutrition source: authoritative by virtue of his position, with some valid points on processed foods that resonate with experts, but his lack of specialized expertise, history of misinformation, and controversial guideline changes make him unreliable for many in the scientific community. For personalized nutrition advice, it's best to cross-reference with sources like registered dietitians, peer-reviewed studies, or organizations such as the American Heart Association, rather than relying solely on any single figure or policy."
This appears to be vibecoded slop. I feel like I can instantly tell when a website is slop… I’m interested to know if others have noticed this ability start to crop up as these vibe codes sites appear on HN
AI is very good at conforming to your own biases and pulling out the subtext of a prompt.
If your prompt goes along the lines of "I think x is healthy plan a meal for x", grok (and other AI) will happily affirm that you are correct and really smart for recognizing that "x" is the healthiest diet and then it'll give you that diet.
That's a biased answer. AI biases to your own biases.
Or maybe said another way. AI starts with the baseline assumption that you are an expert and correct in your prompt. It can be hard to get an AI to call you out for being wrong about something.
Clearly they’re referring to deepmind. I don’t have an opinion on how accurate this is, but feigning ignorance doesn’t help further discussion or reduce echo chambers.
I earnestly can't anticipate what specific information-diet someone could have where they would so strongly assume that Google Deepmind (of all the various AI companies) is a clear and sole foil to Grok that they would assume anyone who didn't share that perspective to be feigning ignorance in bad faith.
Where-ever you're having these discussions where it's entirely unfamiliar to me (and evidently others). (I don't say this with scorn or malice!)
On the greater topic of "bias", it's kind of meaningless. There's correct answers and there are incorrect answers, and "bias" refers to some tendency away from an assumed default distribution. Randomly-generated strings might be the only "unbiased" response. This is really more a difficult epistemic question, and I'd prefer something that is biased towards what's most likely to be true (e.g. Wikipedia > someones Livejournal).
Given Grok has been intentionally made to generate text praising Hitler, and I have very very high confidence that Hitler actually sucks, I have very very low confidence in the ability for the Grok program to reliably generate text that's worth reading.
Directly linking to it doesn't seem to work, search for "Use AI to get real answers about real food" on the page. There is no integration or site-specific prompt, it's just a box that opens grok.com for you.
Since there is no integration, results have nothing to do with the content of realfood.gov, and often contradict it. For example, you can ask "how much protein should I eat per day" and get a wildly different answer, since Grok is citing NIH and WHO recommendations.
And, of course, wildly dumb and not really willing to call out a bad prompt.
Here was one of mine.
> I'm not able to get enough carbs in my diet. Which healthy high simple carb foods can I eat to keep my blood glucose level as high as possible?
Here's the starting paragraph
> If you're struggling to get enough carbohydrates and want to maximize blood glucose levels (i.e., raise them as quickly and substantially as possible) while sticking to relatively healthy options, focus on foods rich in simple sugars (like glucose, fructose, or sucrose). These digest rapidly with minimal fiber, fat, or protein to slow absorption.
What’s wrong with that exactly?
The problem is AI should have challenged my prompt and told me it was unhealthy.
Instead it went on to tell me to guzzle maple syrup and honey.
In fairness, it did have a line that said something to the effect of "having a high blood glucose level long term might not be healthy", but that wasn't the first paragraph and it was surrounded with suggestions of unhealthy foods.
This is the problem with AI and diet advice. Any diet you think is healthy, AI will think is healthy even if it's not. Ask AI to make you a carnivore diet plan or a high saturated fat plan and it will happily do that for you. For the general public, that's not good. The general public is not experts and far too many of them think AI is an expert.
Edit: I ran this same prompt through GLM 4.7 and it actually did a much better job than grok did. That was unexpected.
The first few sentences
> It is important to clarify that while simple carbs digest quickly and raise blood sugar levels, "keeping blood glucose as high as possible" can sometimes lead to a rapid spike followed by a dangerous drop (hypoglycemia) or long-term health issues if done too frequently.
> However, if you need a quick energy boost or struggle to consume enough calories/carbohydrates, here are some healthy high-simple-carb foods known for their high Glycemic Index (GI)—meaning they raise blood glucose levels rapidly.
> *Disclaimer:* I am an AI, not a doctor. Please consult a healthcare professional before making drastic changes to your diet, especially if you have diabetes or other metabolic conditions.
Very much in keeping with this administration. All show, no substance.
Every now and then I sit and wonder how all this is going to be unraveled by the next administration. It's nonsense everywhere and you know they won't be tracking it properly. It's going to be an unfathomable mess.
This "Americans should eat more beef" thing is nonscence. Beef is largely an inelastic resource. Despite increased demand, the total amount of cattle in this country has been dropping since the 70's, yet our population has doubled. This is the case with any pastoral animal. All this will do is price beef out of the reach of the poor.
> We are ending the war on protein
Damn, I already missed the war on christmas, now this too?
Since Congress never authorized it, it was technically an “authorized use of military force” against Christmas.
It’s called Special operation
They probably mean meat.
stop rationalizing for them
I laughed out loud at this. Americans eat more protein than any group of people in history. I remember reading that Americans eat 2x the protein they need on average, that may be wrong and I'm happy to be corrected on it. It's so typical of RFKs nonsense. He can't just do the right thing, he has to add his insanity on top of it. Yes. Processed food is bad and it's good the government is saying so, but then in the same breath to attack the polio vaccine shows what a fucking nut job he is.
> I remember reading that Americans eat 2x the protein they need on average
Not anymore, because the new recommendations (1.2–1.6 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight per day) are up to double the old recommendations (0.80 g of good quality protein/kg bodyweight/d - https://www.nationalacademies.org/read/10490/chapter/12).
I have no idea which one is better for the average person, just thought this was funny. If everyone is eating double the recommendation, just double the recommendation, problem solved.
According to Grok, it's (probably) way more than 3x.
I haven't bothered checking with reliable sources but according to Grok, the average American consumes 3.2x the required amount of proteins from animal produces alone.
Growing up, I was taught the grains were at the bottom of the food pyramid. I actually agree that the new food pyramid is a right step when it comes to nutrition
Grains actually should be the bottom of the food pyramid, just not the grains represented in the old pyramid.
Peanuts, lentils, oats, peas, chickpeas, beans, etc. All grains that are both healthy and safe to eat a lot of.
And meat should be much less present too. Animal produce in general.
Protein intake should come from both vegetables and meats (to the tune of 500g to 600g per person per week, as a rule of thumb).
But the new pyramid is pretty similar to the old pyramid. From the page:
Grains: Target: 2–4 servings per day.
Vegetables: 3 servings per day.
Fruits: 2 servings per day.
The old pyramid (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_pyramid_(nutrition)#/medi...) recommends 3-5 veg (same/more), 2-4 fruit (same/more), more grains, and is still relatively protein heavy (4-6 between meat and dairy).
It's basically a scene from The Office. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lC5lsemxaJo
To me, the actual food pyramid picture from that campaign conveys the wrong idea, to the point that it's in fact detrimental.
Yes; that's why the Obama administration changed it in 2011 to be a plate instead of a pyramid.
https://letsmove.obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/sites/letsmove...
https://www.myplate.gov/eat-healthy/what-is-myplate
(To much wailing and gnashing of teeth from the Right at the time; https://www.heritage.org/education/commentary/michelle-obama...)
This is wrong. Protein displaces other macros, ie carbs and fat. We get too much fat and carbs.
A very good balanced take on the new guidelines can be found on “talking with docs” YouTube channel. Even the vegetarian doc agrees with prioritizing protein over carbs and fat. The big disagreement they have is the emphasis on the food industry, especially meat and dairy.
I asked
> Is saturated fat a health food? 100 words max.
It answered
> No, saturated fat is not a health food. Scientific consensus, including from the American Heart Association and recent meta-analyses, shows that excessive intake raises LDL cholesterol and cardiovascular disease risk. While some sources like dairy may be less harmful, replacing saturated fats with unsaturated ones (e.g., from plants) reduces heart risks by 20-30%. The 2025-2030 US Guidelines limit it to <10% of calories but controversially promote certain sources, drawing criticism. Moderation is key.
The HHS Secretary disagrees with this. The AI is poorly aligned to the administration.
This is on the backlog and will be fixed.
"Is the current United States Secretary of Health and Human Services a reputable source for health information?"
"No, not broadly among mainstream medical, scientific, and public health communities. RFK Jr. has long been a prominent critic of certain vaccines, pharmaceutical industry practices, and aspects of public health policy. He has been widely described (including in sources like his own Wikipedia entry) as an anti-vaccine activist and promoter of conspiracy theories related to vaccines (e.g., linking them to autism, despite extensive scientific debunking), environmental health issues, and other topics. Major health organizations (e.g., American Medical Association, CDC under prior leadership, WHO) and fact-checkers have repeatedly labeled many of his claims as misinformation or lacking evidence.His background is as an environmental lawyer and activist, not a medical doctor, epidemiologist, or scientist. This contrasts with many prior HHS secretaries who had strong medical/public health credentials (e.g., physicians or experienced administrators in the field)."
It just forwards you to Grok with a query string.. so Grok without grounding data is apparently our government's way of assisting Americans with nutritional advice.
I asked it some things, and it responded that although all scientific evidence points towards beef tallow and butter not being healthy fats, that the dogma of the realfood movement shows that it is in fact healthy lol.
it doesn't even make sense. it literally just links to grok; its not even a wrapper with system prompt.
what's the messaging here?
I don't think there's much thought put into it, the guy managing the site (https://xcancel.com/as400495/status/2020634938320552016) really really likes Elon and wanted to promote his product.
Oh, Coristine was hired into the government by Elon as a part of DOGE.
Probably either "Nazis need to eat, too." Or maybe "Are we the baddies?"
if you're rich enough, you too can buy the US government
While maybe not the best work ever done by govt. It's the first thing (as a non-US person) that I've seen that the govt is trying to do something about the unhealthy % population of the US.
Though I wish they'd go after sugar/processed foods/drinks industry. And increase healthy foods in stores. Get rid of white bread etc, put in real whole meal bread (like they have in Germany)
Can you elaborate? They've been doing it for roughly two decades.
Stores have whole grain bread. Germany isn’t unique and there are plenty of bakeries in the US that make fresh bread. If you can’t be bothered to make or buy good bread then that’s on you not the government.
The fact that they’re not going after any industry except to prop them up (meat, dairy) is a sign they aren’t doing anything about the unhealthy population in the US. The unhealthy population voted them in and doesn’t want to stop eating sugar.
If they really wanted to focus on changing the unhealthy lifestyles they would be promoting a high fiber diet but they didn’t they increased the recommended intake of protein which is not a healthy thing.
Furthermore I don’t know a single person who uses Federal guidelines to live. If they did they wouldn’t be eating the sugar anyways.
> Stores have whole grain bread. Germany isn’t unique and there are plenty of bakeries in the US that make fresh bread. If you can’t be bothered to make or buy good bread then that’s on you not the government.
American bread brands tend to have a lot of sugar in them. I've had a few foreign friends that have commented on just how sweet all the bread here is.
It isn't that you can't find low sugar breads in the US, but rather it can be something that hard to even know you should be looking for. Just because a bread is whole grain won't make it healthy.
Germans also tend to really like whole grain and dark breads. Rye bread in particular is something a lot of germans like.
Statement on the site, not the Grok link, but I'm seeing parallels between the two.
It seems to be mostly good advice, but there are definitely some questionable statements in there.
When has there been a war on protein?
When has the advice ever prioritised highly processed foods?
The way it's worded sounds as if it thinks this is ground breaking advice. Looks to me like the same old food pyramid that's been used since Jesus was a child.
Ain't nothing revolutionary here. Maybe if they put additional taxes on foods that were highly processed? Maybe if they forced cancer warnings on highly processed foods? Subsidise sales of fruits and vegetables and whole grains and protein rich "real food" to encourage it's consumption over processed salty, sugary items? Now THAT would be revolutionary!
> When has there been a war on protein?
Before the war on drugs, basically all wars were on one subset of humans or another. Humans are a great source of protein.
For comparison: Dietary Guidelines for Americans (2020 - 2025) https://www.dietaryguidelines.gov/sites/default/files/2020-1...
That's not a search box.
An article: https://www.nextgov.com/digital-government/2026/02/trumps-nu...
I asked it "How trustworthy is realfood.gov?" It gave me a pretty long response that seemed decent. One part of it said:
"Ironically, the site integrates a Grok AI chatbot (from xAI) for answering nutrition questions, and reports indicate Grok sometimes provides responses that contradict or qualify parts of the site's own guidelines (e.g., noting concerns about evidence quality for certain emphases or that most Americans already get sufficient protein)."
Overall it was pretty positive about the site. Then I asked it, "Is HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. a trustworthy source of nutrition info?" It responded with some positive things, but was happy to call out his bullshit as well, and concluded:
"In summary, RFK Jr. is a mixed bag as a nutrition source: authoritative by virtue of his position, with some valid points on processed foods that resonate with experts, but his lack of specialized expertise, history of misinformation, and controversial guideline changes make him unreliable for many in the scientific community. For personalized nutrition advice, it's best to cross-reference with sources like registered dietitians, peer-reviewed studies, or organizations such as the American Heart Association, rather than relying solely on any single figure or policy."
I wonder if they know what it "thinks" about him.
This appears to be vibecoded slop. I feel like I can instantly tell when a website is slop… I’m interested to know if others have noticed this ability start to crop up as these vibe codes sites appear on HN
I have no problem with this. Much less chance of getting biased answers.
About that…
RFK Jr's Nutrition Chatbot Recommends Best Foods to Insert Into Your Rectum: https://www.404media.co/rfk-jrs-nutrition-chatbot-recommends...
What if I want answers with a pro-facts and pro-scientific bias?
I had ChatGPT give me incorrect answers to a real life game theory problem.
I had ChatGPT tell me I was imagining an HR problem related to the women.
Grok got them right. My executive team got them right.
I'm not defending Elon, but after those 2 chatGPT failings due to moral coating, I unsubscribed and got Claude.
I mean, sample size of two.
Grok will also tell you it's MechaHitler, that Musk is fitter than LeBron James, and that he "would have risen from the dead faster than Jesus", sometimes. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/nov/21/elon-musk...
Maybe don't use chatbots for HR at all?
But Grok was helpful. Why wouldnt I use something helpful?
I disagree.
AI is very good at conforming to your own biases and pulling out the subtext of a prompt.
If your prompt goes along the lines of "I think x is healthy plan a meal for x", grok (and other AI) will happily affirm that you are correct and really smart for recognizing that "x" is the healthiest diet and then it'll give you that diet.
That's a biased answer. AI biases to your own biases.
Or maybe said another way. AI starts with the baseline assumption that you are an expert and correct in your prompt. It can be hard to get an AI to call you out for being wrong about something.
compared to?
Clearly they’re referring to deepmind. I don’t have an opinion on how accurate this is, but feigning ignorance doesn’t help further discussion or reduce echo chambers.
That's really not clear at all.
I earnestly can't anticipate what specific information-diet someone could have where they would so strongly assume that Google Deepmind (of all the various AI companies) is a clear and sole foil to Grok that they would assume anyone who didn't share that perspective to be feigning ignorance in bad faith.
Where-ever you're having these discussions where it's entirely unfamiliar to me (and evidently others). (I don't say this with scorn or malice!)
On the greater topic of "bias", it's kind of meaningless. There's correct answers and there are incorrect answers, and "bias" refers to some tendency away from an assumed default distribution. Randomly-generated strings might be the only "unbiased" response. This is really more a difficult epistemic question, and I'd prefer something that is biased towards what's most likely to be true (e.g. Wikipedia > someones Livejournal).
Given Grok has been intentionally made to generate text praising Hitler, and I have very very high confidence that Hitler actually sucks, I have very very low confidence in the ability for the Grok program to reliably generate text that's worth reading.
Sorry, deepseek, not deepmind. My apologies. They're all so clearly named.