By Kenneth Chang, Marco Hernandez, Melanie Bencosme, Jon Miller, Gabriel Blanco, Joey Sendaydiego and Luke Piotrowski

April 1, 2026

In an earlier era, the American Heart Assn. and the U.S. federal government were very closely aligned on what the American public should eat and why.

Dietary guidelines from the cardiovascular research nonprofit largely mirrored those published by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. American Heart Assn. representatives advised the government on the science behind its dietary advice.

But as is the case with many public health issues these days, the distance between the policies recommended by established medical groups and those endorsed by Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. appears to be growing wider.

On Tuesday, American Heart Assn. released its updated guidelines for a heart-healthy diet. Like the new federal dietary guidelines released back in January, the document cautions against processed foods and refined sugars.

But the group pressed back on some nutrition claims that Kennedy and Make America Healthy Again influencers have touted in public statements and written into federal policy.

Unlike the new federally authorized inverted food pyramid, which gives top billing to an enormous cut of steak, a tray of ground meat, a hunk of cheese and carton of whole milk, the American Heart Assn. urges plant-based proteins over red meat, and low- or nonfat dairy products over whole-fat options.

In contrast to Kennedy’s declaration in January that the U.S. was “ending the war on saturated fat,” the heart association continues to recommend unsaturated fat sources over saturated ones for the sake of cardiovascular health.

The heart association also pushes back on Kennedy’s well-publicized passion for beef tallow as a replacement for seed oils, which he has accused (despite shaky evidence) of “poisoning” Americans.

“Animal fats (eg, beef tallow and butter) and tropical oils (eg, coconut oil, cocoa butter, and palm oil) are relatively high in saturated fat, whereas nontropical plant oils (eg, soybean, canola, and olive oils) are relatively high in unsaturated fat,” the American Heart Assn. paper reads. “In summary, as part of heart-healthy dietary patterns, nontropical plant sources of fat should be used as part of food preparation in place of animal fats and tropical oils.”

In response to questions, both the American Heart Assn. and Department of Health and Human Services emphasized their shared objectives over any differences.

“The American Heart Association’s [paper] is aligned with the Dietary Guidelines on the major issues: eat real food, avoid highly processed food, and limit refined grains and added sugar,” said Andrew Nixon, a health department spokesman. “We look forward to working collaboratively with the [American Heart Assn.] to evangelize these core principles and reverse the diet-related chronic disease epidemic.”

The heart association and the federal government have different purposes when drafting their recommendations, said Dr. Simin Liu, director of UC Irvine’s Center for Global Cardiometabolic Health & Nutrition and a professor at the UC Irvine School of Medicine.

The heart association’s guidelines are intended to reflect the best available evidence on nutrition and cardiovascular health outcomes, whereas federal nutrition standards inform the content of federally funded meals served in schools, hospitals and military dining facilities, and help determine foods included under assistance plans like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

The two sets of guidelines aren’t totally at odds. The heart association applauded the government’s warnings against added sugars, refined grains and processed foods in January, noting that the advice aligns with the organization’s long-standing recommendations.

“Those of us in the field have been pushing for food-based dietary recommendations, like advocating people eat actual foods instead of [processed] food products,” Liu said, but “the focus on animal product consumption is a bit off the mark.”

The administration’s hearty endorsement of animal protein sources surprised many health groups, as a diet rich in red meat is strongly associated with poorer cardiovascular health.

A supplemental report published alongside the federal guidelines noted that several members of the government’s advisory panel had financial ties to meat and dairy industry groups, including the National Cattlemen’s Beef Assn., the National Pork Board and the California Dairy Research Foundation.

The heart association’s guidelines better reflect the current scientific consensus on the relationship between food and cardiovascular health, said a spokesperson for the nonprofit Center for Science in the Public Interest, and “will be a valuable resource for anyone who was confused by the mixed messages” in the government’s earlier advice.

EDWARDS, Calif. — If NASA’s colossal new moon rocket, slated to launch with astronauts for the first time as soon as tomorrow, explodes on the pad or breaks up as it accelerates through the atmosphere, the space agency has a plan:

Fire a powerful motor affixed to the top of the crew capsule that is literally designed to outrun debris from an exploding rocket, flip the capsule around as it soars through the air, then deploy parachutes to bring the astronauts back to safety.

Reliably pulling off this high-energy yet delicate dance isn’t easy. Engineers and scientists across the country spent years developing and testing this Launch Abort System, including many at the Armstrong Flight Research Center, which has spent decades pushing the limits of human flight in Southern California’s Mojave Desert.

For the Artemis program, aiming to bring humans back to the moon for the first time in a half-century and prepare for eventually landing people on Mars, NASA tapped the center to help execute two critical tests of the abort system in the 2010s.

In the first, NASA engineers attached the system to a dummy test capsule packed with hundreds of sensors, placed it alongside the glimmering white sand dunes of New Mexico and fired it off to simulate an abort from the launch pad.

In the second, crews headed to the Florida space coast, where they placed the abort system and test capsule on a modified missile. To mimic the conditions of a rocket ascent, they launched the missile and, after it broke the sound barrier, triggered the abort system.

It’s these kinds of extreme flight conditions that the Armstrong Flight Research Center specializes in.

Brad Flick, who retired as director of the center on March 20, recalled a poster outside his office depicting the Apollo moon landings: “The poster says, ‘Before we did it there, we practiced it here.’ And that’s what we do.”

Southern California’s pioneers in human flight

Even before NASA was called NASA, its engineers, scientists and test pilots were pushing the limits of flight in the Mojave Desert.

Out in the middle of current-day Edwards Air Force Base — one of the largest airfields in the world, at some 480 square miles — a small team began the X-plane program, a series of experimental aircraft designed to travel faster, higher and (purposefully) more awkwardly than ever before.

In 1947, with its X-1 plane, the team became the first in the history of human flight to break the sound barrier.

By the early 1960s, the full-fledged flight research center had become a hub of cutting-edge aviation research, thrown into high gear by NASA’s “brightest and boldest”:

A young pilot by the name of Neil Armstrong was guiding the rocket-powered X-15 on a number of test flights. On one where Armstrong flew above Earth’s atmosphere, he struggled to trigger a safety system designed to limit the intense forces pilots experience and overshot his runway by about 45 miles, ending up over Pasadena.

This NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center hangar houses a Gulfstream III airplane that the center will use during the Artemis II mission to track the capsule as it reenters the atmosphere.

(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)

The center was also designing and testing mock-ups of a lunar lander, which Armstrong — now the center’s namesake — later used to practice landing on the moon while still here on Earth.

Meanwhile, another plane dubbed the “flying bathtub” was also taking shape at the center. The odd-looking craft essentially aimed to test whether they could fly with no wings, instead generating lift from the body of the plane. To launch it, they attached the plane to a Pontiac convertible and ripped across the nearby lake bed at 120 mph.

The data they got from the experiment informed the design of the Space Shuttle. Instead of relying solely on large wings — which would have needed to be heavy and bulky to survive the extreme conditions of reentry — the shuttle generated a fair amount of lift with its body so it could get by with stubbier, lighter wings. The necessary but perhaps inelegant design earned the Space Shuttle its own nickname: the “flying brick.”

Flick didn’t indulge in telling any of the “cowboys-in-airplanes stories” he’d heard during his nearly 40 years at the center. However, he noted that it’s a special breed that can handle the extremes of the test pilot job — and that it requires some serious risk management across the whole team.

“The safest thing to ever do with an airplane is to never fly it,” Flick said. “That’s not the business we’re in. … The people in that airplane — be they pilots, or in the cabin — they rely on us to do our jobs well, to keep them safe and alive. That’s a responsibility we take very seriously.”

Armstrong Flight Research Center Director Brad Flick stands next to a Gulfstream III airplane on March 18, 2026.

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

Testing astronauts’ last resort

The center’s experience not only pushing far past the frontiers of flight, but also turning its experimental aircraft into “flying labs” with dozens or hundreds of sensors, has made it key to the success of NASA’s space missions over the years.

For the first of the two Artemis abort tests, called Pad Abort-1, the Armstrong Flight Research Center team painted the test capsule; installed the sensors, flight computers, wires and parachutes; and then put the whole system through a series of tests and measurements to make sure it was ready for launch.

Throughout the complex aerial gymnastics of an abort, the distribution of weight matters immensely: A top-heavy capsule performs differently than a bottom-heavy capsule. Unaccounted weight on one side can also set the capsule off-kilter. So the Armstrong team employed a series of tests involving fancy scales and gently tipping the capsule.

Aborts are also intense. The motors that pull the capsule away from the doomed rocket are designed to accelerate from 0 to 500 mph — well over half the speed of sound — in just two seconds. In the process, the capsule shakes pretty aggressively. So the team subjected the capsule to vibrations in the lab to ensure everything would still work after that kind of extreme shaking. It’s better to break stuff on the ground than in the air.

The Armstrong team ultimately selected White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico for the pad-abort test. It also oversaw the construction of the launch pad and coordinated operations for the test, which NASA successfully completed in 2010.

Years later, NASA launched its Ascent Abort-2 test atop a modified missile in preparation for the Artemis launches. For that, the Armstrong team had a more focused role designing and testing the network of hundreds of sensors that would be the agency’s eyes and ears for the test. This included strapping the sensors to a vibration table and giving them a solid shake to make sure they could handle the G-forces.

Environmental test technician Cryss Punteney places her hands on the Unholtz Dickie vibration table where components for Ascent Abort-2 were tested inside at the NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center.

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

“If the tree falls in the forest, and no one was around to hear, did it actually make a sound?” said Laurie Grindle, Armstrong deputy center director who served as the project manager for the first abort test. “If we didn’t have any instrumentation, we could have launched something great that showed up wonderful on video, but we wouldn’t know if it performed well.”

The second test went off without a hitch in 2019. The teams got invaluable data — and some wonderful video too.

In 2022, NASA’s uncrewed Artemis I test mission with the abort system successfully reach the moon — no abort needed. When the crewed Artemis II mission launches to the moon as soon as tomorrow, the abort system will, for the first time, be responsible for keeping astronauts alive.