Currently browsing posts about: Dietary-Guidelines

I subscribe to lots of food industry newsletters from the William Reed company, all of them written by top-notch reporters who cover topics thoroughly and accurately.  They write about things food companies need to know about.  I do too.  I find them invaluable.

For example: It would never have occurred to me to consider how the guidelines might affect forced labor in the food supply chain.

This collection of articles on the new dietary guidelines comes from FoodNavigator-USA.

• Why the 2025–2030 Dietary Guidelines need a ‘mulligan’ – and how to fix them: This isn’t a food fight, it’s a structural failure, according to experts who say the new US Dietary Guidelines need a reset, not another round of compromises… Read more
• ‘Highly-processed’ or ‘ultra-processed’? New dietary guidelines reignite a definitional food fight: The 2025–2030 Dietary Guidelines for Americans avoid the term “ultra-processed foods,” prompting both praise and criticism… Read more
• Ultra-processed food fears mount even as consumer understanding about it lags: Americans increasingly factor processing into food choices, but inconsistent definitions and tradeoffs around convenience and cost leave room for clearer communication, according to new IFIC research… Read more
• How the 2025-2030 Dietary Guidelines are shifting America’s plate – and sparking debate: The newest Dietary Guidelines emphasize whole foods, protein and animal fats – a shift praised by some experts as overdue, but others warn the report is retro and insufficient… Read more
• What ‘healthy’ means to Americans is changing, and so should marketing: Consumers want healthier food but struggle to trust nutrition information, creating both challenges and opportunities for brands, according to new data from the International Food Information Council… Read more
• How the Dietary Guidelines may shape product strategy and development:  The latest Dietary Guidelines may not reinvent the wheel, but they offer manufacturers a roadmap to balance nutrition, consumer preference and formulation strategy across sweeteners, grains and processed foods, according to one expert… Read more
• Federal diet guidelines accused of bowing to Big Meat:  Doctors and nutrition advocates say new Dietary Guidelines for Americans sideline science in favor of meat and dairy industry… Read more
• 2026 beef trends: How new Dietary Guidelines are shaping protein demand:  Dietary guidance, convenience-driven meals and emerging trends like beef tallow may open new avenues for innovation in beef… Read more
• US Dietary Guidelines sideline MyPlate in favor of inverted food pyramid:  The 2025–2030 Dietary Guidelines for Americans spotlight an inverted food pyramid, effectively sidelining MyPlate and sparking debate among nutrition experts and educators… Read more 
• Study finds dietary guidelines linked to forced labor risks in supply chain: Seafood, dairy and red meat carry a higher risk of forced labor, according to a new Tufts and University of Nottingham study that maps labor exploitation across popular US diets… Read more
  

A reader writes (my edit to preserve requested anonymity):

It’s been quite the undertaking to update what to tell patients and clients about the new DGA.  So many resources I’ve always referred to with MyPlate, eating patterns, and more are gone.  I am now having to replace them with other resources and recommendations from the American Heart Association, the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and more.  We dietitians are supposed to be fully aligned with the 2025 DGA.  And what about nutrition textbooks?  My suggestion: “integrates the new 2025 DGA through an evidence based lens to foster critical thinking.”

Perfect!  I love “integrates the new 2025 DGA through an evidence based lens to foster critical thinking.”

That’s what we all need to be doing with students, patients, clients, colleagues, friends, and family.

Let’s hear it for critical thinking!

Resource

I’ve been sent a link to a webinar on precisely this topic.  I haven’t had a chance to watch it yet but I sure hope the speakers got into the weeds.

In my post last week, “The government is actively promoting meat and dairy intake,” I said

The new Dietary Guidelines for Americans actively promote meat and dairy intake, especially full-fat dairy.  The USDA has long acted as a marketing arm of those industries through its research and promotion (checkoff) programs.

I then noted that this government takes promotion to new levels through its milk mustache ads and pronouncements that we have ended the war on protein (protein has long been understood as a euphemism for meat).

I ended with this comment: “I chalk all this up to the extraordinary lobbying power of the meat and dairy industries.”

Whew.  Did that ever get a response.

Readers raised two issues:

I.  The guidelines and inverted pyramid give equal weight to plant foods.

That’s not how I read them.  I see them as giving lip service to plants but prioritizing meat.  They visually present meat most prominently in the interactive graphic at realfood.gov.  Subsequent statements of the USDA and HHS secretaries also support this view.  And then there are the authors with financial links to beef industry groups who wrote the scientific reports relevent to meat.

II. This is not about meat industry lobbying; it is about Robert F. Kennedy, Jr’s ideology.  Well, yes.  That too.  “Ideology” refers to belief systems that structure views of the world.  Everybody has them.

I, for example, am ideologically in favor of the dietary guidelines’ advice to eat real food and avoid highly processed food, but ideologically opposed to advice to prioritize animal protein over plant protein.  I would argue that the vast preponderance of research supports that view.

People holding other ideological views disagree, evidently.  They pick different studies to read and come to different conclusions.

Two members of the nine people writing scientific reviews for the guidelines assure me that their reviews are unbiased.  But those reviews invariably reflect the ideology of the people who wrote them.

As I often point out, nutrition research is impossible to control rigorously, unless you lock people up for extended periods of time.  That is why the best controlled studies, those done in monitored metabolic wards, can only be done for a few weeks at most.  Diets are complicated; eaters are complicated; research is complicated.  Complicated research requires interpretation.  Interpretation depends on the interpreter’s particular ideology.

That is why appointing a diverse committee to look at research questions has its benefits; people with differing ideologies have to work out points of agreement.

I will say this for RFK, Jr.  He makes his ideology clear.  It prioritizes personal experience over science.

My ideology: We need science to distinguish anecdote from fact.

Let’s agree that on the meat priority issue, RFK Jr’s ideology fits well with meat industry objectives.

The meat industry has a long history of lobbying around dietary guidelines (see my book, Food Politics).

I have not seen specific reports of meat industry lobbying around the new dietary guidelines.  Apparently, no lobbying was necessary.

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.

The press release

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

Fact Sheet

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.

Dietary Guidelines for America 2025-2030

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

Press conference video

You can watch HHS and USDA official enthuse about the new guidelines and pyramid.

Eat Real Food: The Interactive Website

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.

The Scientific Foundation for The Dietary Guidelines of America

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.”

Scientific Foundation Appendices

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. 

Daily Servings by Calorie Level

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

• In 2014, South Park flipped the pyramid.
• Here’s the MAHA version

History of the Dietary Guidelines and Pyramid

• Scientific Report of the 2025 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee
• Dietary Guidelines for America, Previous Editions, 1980-2020
• MAHA history of dietary guidelines

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.

• Nestle M. Dietary advice for the 1990s: the political history of the food guide pyramid. Caduceus: A Humanities Journal for Medicine and the Health Sciences 1993:9:136-153.
• Nestle M. In defense of the USDA Food Guide Pyramid. Nutrition Today 1998;33(5):189-197
• Woolf SH, Nestle M. Do dietary guidelines explain the obesity epidemic? American Journal of Preventive Medicine 2008;34(3):263-265.
• Nestle M.  Perspective: Challenges and Controversial Issues in the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 1980 to 2015.  Advances in Nutrition, 2018;9:148-150.

Other views

• Kevin Klatt’s analysis: Ambiguous DGAs & The Rancher’s Pyramid
• Christopher Gardner’s take (he was a member of the ignored DGAC)
• Center for Science in the Publlc Interest and Center for Biological Diversity: The Uncompromised Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2025-2030 (what the guidelines would have looked like if they followed the science)
• Center for Biological Diversity: A Model for Healthy and Sustainable Dietary Guidelines for Americans and Implementation and Policy Recommendations Guide
• Statement from Nourish Science
• Jane Black in Consumed:The Ribeye Revolution: Inside MAHA’s Protein-Packed Dietary Guidelines

Let’s start with what I like about the 2020-2030 Dietary Guidelines and New Pyramid, taken together.

Eat Real Food

It’s how I eat, and prefer to eat.

It’s consistent with Michael Pollan’s Eat food.  Not too much.  Mostly plants.

Pollan’s version, to which I subscribe, is supported by at least three of the guidelines:

• Eat vegetables & fruits throughout the day
• Focus on whole grains
• Limit highly processed foods, added sugars, & refined carbohydrates

The New Pyramid

It’s bright and cheerful.

It illustrates a basic nutrition message: eat a wide variety of foods from all food groups.

It’s possible to eat healthfully following this diagram if eating a wide variety of foods and balancing calories.

It’s consistent with food movement objectives, and is bringing attention to these objectives.

What’s missing and I wish were included

• Eat Real Food as the first dietary guideline
• Greater emphasis on plant sources of protein
• Inclusion of whole grain foods in the “eat more” part of the pyramid
• Policy support

The need for policy

Much about these guidelines and food guides connects with long-desired objectives for a food system aimed at promoting the health of people and the planet.  As I noted in an earlier post, these guidelines focus explicitly on personal responsibility, not system change.

To create a food system that supports eating according to these guidelines and pyramid, we need:

• Agricultural subsidies: for foods for people (not feed for animals or fuel for automobiles, as the current system does)
• School food: kitchens and cooks in every school, gardens wherever possible, and enough money to pay for real food
• Education: cooking classes for kids and adults, men as well as women
• Equity: enough money to buy real food, and the space, equipment, and time to prepare it

I will have more to say about all this as time goes on, so stay tuned.

The Dietary Guidelines for America 2025-2030 simply say “Limit alcoholic beverages: Consume less alcohol for better
overall health.”  They go on to specify who should not drink alcohol.

People who should completely avoid alcohol include pregnant women, people who are recovering from alcohol use disorder or are unable to control the amount they drink, and people taking medications or with medical conditions that can interact with alcohol. For those with a family history of alcoholism, be mindful of alcohol consumption and associated addictive behaviors.

This guideline

• Does not specify what is meat by “limit” or “less.”
• Does not mention cancer as a risk of alcohol consumption.

These are big issues.  Excessive alcohol intake poses problems for society as well as for individuals: car accidents and gun violence, for example.

From a public health perspective, the lower the overall level of alcohol consumption in a population, the fewer the health and societal problems it causes.  The overall message always should be: drink as little alcohol as possible.

This message is complicated by evidence, highly contested, that low levels of alcohol might reduce risks for heart disease and overall mortality.  Even if correct, advice about alcohol would need to balance the purported benefits for heart disease against risks for cancer, particularly breast cancer.

The Biden-era 2025 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee did not discuss alcohol because the agencies were waiting for the results of commissioned reports on alcohol and health.  As it happened, three reports came out just after the DGAC submitted its report late in 2025.

• The Surgeon General: Advisory on Alcohol and Cancer Risk (see my post on this): It emphasized the role of alcohol in raising the risk for seven kinds of cancer, particularly breast cancer and called for warning labels.  The World Health Organization also did so.
• The National Academies of Sciences: Review of Evidence on Alcohol and Health (my post is here): This one emphasized potential benefits of alcohol for reducing risks for heart disease and overall mortality, but minimized cancer risks (see Roni Rabin’s account in the New York Times, which notes conflicted interests among some members of the panel).
• The HHS: Interagency Coordinating Committee on the Prevention of Underage Drinking (ICCPUD)  According to Roni Rabin’s stories in the New York Times, the report “warned that even one drink a day raises the risk of liver cirrhosis, oral and esophageal cancer, and injuries.”  HHS withdrew the report, and Congress told the agencies to rely only on the National Academies of Sciences report as the basis for the dietary guidelines. And a House Committee has just trashed it for being Biden-biased.  So much for cancer risk.

Even so, the take-home lesson from all of these reports is that less alcohol is better.

At issue is how much less.

As I’ve explained previously, the dietary guidelines have long stated that 2 drinks a day for men and 1 for women (because women metabolize alcohol differently) is a safe amount.

The omission of these limits is difficult to interpret.  Do these guidelines consider those limits too low or too high?

At the press conference, Mehmet Oz said:

Alcohol is a social lubricant that brings people together. In the best-case scenario, I don’t think you should drink alcohol, but it does allow people an excuse to bond and socialize, and there’s probably nothing healthier than having a good time with friends in a safe way..You look at the Blue Zones, for example, around the world, where people live the longest. Alcohol is sometimes part of their diet…Again, small amounts. There is alcohol on these dietary guidelines, but the implication is don’t have it for breakfast.

The Eat Real Food Website says “We are ending the war on protein. Every meal must prioritize high-quality, nutrient-dense protein from both animal and plant sources….” But here’s what comes up first and is clearly the first priority.

And here’s an exultant RFK Jr on X:

Protein is well understood to be a euphemism for meat.  I’ve already written about how most people already eat twice the protein needed so advice to eat more of it is unlikely to do anyone any good.

And the document, Daily Servings by Calorie Level, makes it clear that you have to eat meat if you are going to reach the level of protein intake recommended.  For this, I am indebted to Kevin Klatt, who posted this on X.

What’s wrong with recommending more meat?

• It’s healthier getting protein from plant sources.
• The way we produce meat pollutes the environment with pesticides and herbicides to grow their feed.
• It also presents major food safety hazards (see Eric Schlosser’s update on Fast Food Nation)
• Cattle burp methane and are the single largest food source of greenhouse gas emissions.
• Beef cattle are raised in CAFOs under crowded and dirty conditions.
• The meat industry exploits workers.
• Consolidation in the meat industry keeps prices high (Tyson’s just agreed to an $82.5M settlement in a beef price-fixing lawsuit)
• Producing meat the way we do is not sustainable and adds to inequities.

Of course, sustainability and equity are non-topics for this administration.  But they matter and should very much be on the table for discussion.

We already eat plenty of meat—more than 100 pounds per capita per year of red meat alone (according to USDA).  We don’t need to be eating more.

Correction

In my first post on these dietary guidelines, I said:

Some of the instructions don’t make sense: “Consume meat with no or limited added sugars?”  Who does this?

Several readers wrote to object.  Renata M, for example, said she could think of so many examples, she just had to say something.

• BBQ sauce
• Ketchup
• Teriyaki sauce
• Other popular “Chinese” foods
• Brown sugar-glazed pork chops
• Pasta sauce
• Sloppy Joe’s
• Brines and marinades
• and more, if honey and maple syrup are considered added sugars [they are]

Oops. Sorry about that.  Thanks!