The Stonehenge Diet – America’s Prescription for Healthy Living

 The Stonehenge Diet

In January 2026, the United States took a dramatic step in public health policy. The new Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2025–2030, unveiled by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., effectively inverted the old food pyramid. Protein from animal sources, healthy fats, full-fat dairy, vegetables, and fruits now form the broad, recommended base of the diet. Added sugars, ultra-processed foods, and even whole grains are sharply limited or relegated to the narrow apex.

It was a striking reversal of decades-old advice. Yet, remarkably, this “new” approach bears an uncanny resemblance to the eating patterns of people who lived 4,500 years ago on Salisbury Plain – the builders and users of Stonehenge.

The primary evidence comes from Durrington Walls, the large seasonal settlement just three kilometres north-east of Stonehenge, occupied around 2500 BC. Excavations there have revealed a diet overwhelmingly centred on animal foods. Pig bones dominate the faunal remains, often comprising 60–70% of the total, with cattle a strong second. Many pigs were slaughtered at nine months old, pointing to organised midwinter feasts where communities from across Britain converged.

Lipid analysis of Grooved Ware pottery shows that large vessels were used for pork fats, while smaller ones contained dairy residues – evidence of milk, butter, cheese, or yoghurt. Even coprolites (preserved human and dog faeces) indicate consumption of nutrient-dense offal.

By contrast, evidence for cultivated cereals at Durrington Walls is surprisingly sparse. The most common plant remains are gathered wild foods: hazelnut shells, sloes, crab apples, and other seasonal fruits and berries. A new archaeobotanical project, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council’s RICHeS programme and announced in early 2026, is re-examining charred plant remains to identify these wild resources in greater detail and reconstruct the surrounding woodland.

What emerges is a pattern that aligns closely with America’s freshly revised guidelines: abundant high-quality animal protein, healthy animal fats, full-fat dairy, and modest amounts of seasonal plant foods – with minimal reliance on grains.

The Stonehenge builders were not following government recommendations, of course. They were responding to their environment, their seasonal rhythms, and the practical demands of feeding large gatherings. Yet their choices produced a diet that modern science is now rediscovering as robust and metabolically sound.

Perhaps the real lesson is simple: when official advice finally catches up with both ancestral practice and emerging evidence, it often looks less like innovation and more like a return to what worked all along. The “Stonehenge Diet” – heavy on meat, dairy, and wild plants, light on cereals – may turn out to be America’s latest prescription, but it is also one of humanity’s oldest.