A brief note about the political history of the dietary guidelines. When I was on the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee in 1995, our committee selected the topics for review, reviewed the science, wrote the scientific report, and wrote the dietary guidelines. We did the whole thing, except for the USDA’s food guide pyramid. For this version, HHS and USDA ignored the scientific report and appointed a committee to do the rest. They got all this done in a year, which must have been one big rush.
This was confusing because its list of recommendations differs from those in the actual guidelines, does not use the term “Eat Real Food,” and does not list the accompanying documents.
- Prioritize protein at every meal
- Consume full-fat dairy with no added sugars
- Eat vegetables and fruits throughout the day, focusing on whole forms
- Incorporate healthy fats from whole foods such as meats, seafood, eggs, nuts, seeds, olives, and avocados
- Focus on whole grains, while sharply reducing refined carbohydrates
- Limit highly processed foods, added sugars, and artificial additives
- Eat the right amount for you, based on age, sex, size, and activity level
- Choose water and unsweetened beverages to support hydration
- Limit alcohol consumption for better overall health
This sends up red flags. Anytime I hear suggestions that everything you thought you knew about nutrition is wrong, I think uh-oh. Science doesn’t work that way. But these guidelines are not about science. They are about politics. They say Americans are sick
because their government has been unwilling to tell them the truth. For decades, the U.S. government has recommended and incentivized low quality, highly processed foods and drug interventions instead of prevention. Under the leadership of President Trump, the government is now going to tell Americans the truth.
Vast numbers of nutrition scientists have been lying about healthy diets? Seems unlikely.
The only place where the message “eat real food” appears is in the secretaries’ introduction: “The message is simple: eat real food.” Weirdly, that political message is not part of the actual guidelines. These are:
- Eat the right amount for you
- Prioritize protein foods at every meal
- Consume dairy
- Eat vegetables & fruits throughout the day
- Incorporate healthy fats
- Focus on whole grains
- Limit highly processed foods, added sugars, & refined carbohydrates
- Limit alcoholic beverages
You can watch HHS and USDA official enthuse about the new guidelines and pyramid.
Here, at last, is where you get the real-food message: “whole, nutrient-dense, and naturally occurring.” It is also where you get a sense of the guidelines’ priorities: “Every meal must prioritize high-quality, nutrient-dense protein from both animal and plant sources” (meat and full-fat dairy come first). The site provides links to the scientific reports and the servings document, and also a Q & A.
This 90-page document was produced by a committee appointed by HHS and USDA to redo the work of the Scientific Advisory Committee because “Equity considerations and public policy preferences pervaded the DGAC Report. The Committee consistently advocated plant-based dietary patterns, deprioritized animal-sourced proteins, and favored high linoleic acid vegetable oils.” Instead, this committee is ostensibly “free from ideological bias, institutional conflicts, or predetermined conclusions.” The report lists their ties to meat, dairy, and other food associations with vested interests in what the guidelines might say. There’s some surprising stuff in here: “Supporting testosterone health in men.”
This is 418 pages of research review. For this, I am taking the easy way and quoting Kevin Klatt’s detailed analysis.
Their whole basis is that nutrition is the key determinant of chronic disease risk, that you need to take personal responsibility to reduce your risk and that you’ve been lied to by past administrations who’s recommendations caused your health issues….There is no illusion from reading the Review and Appendix that the DGAs resulted from a rigorous and transparent process that pre-registered questions to be addressed, reviewed the data, and got the experts in a room to set down a common measuring stick by which they’re assessing the evidence- the approach is little more than a gish gallop to support the preformed conclusions that the HHS Secretary, MAHA advocates and influencers have been pushing since the moment they got into office.
This one came as a surprise. I wish it had been included with the guidelines because it specifies what the guidelines actually mean in practice.
South Park’s take on this
History of the Dietary Guidelines and Pyramid
My version of this history
I have written extensively about dietary guidelines and food guides on this site since the 2010 guidelines and pyramid. Search for either term. Here is a selection of my academic papers on the topic.
Other views
