What to make of the new dietary guidelines

This week, the Trump administration unveiled the latest iteration of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGAs), which steer the federal government’s food purchasing, establish standards for the federal school lunch program, determine what foods are available in nutrition programs and form the basis of nutrition education in schools and outreach programs. Since 1990, those guidelines have been reviewed and updated every five years. And while this year’s process started similarly to those in the past, the guidelines were delayed several months. With the final signoff on the DGAs falling to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (RFK Jr.) and Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins, many speculated this iteration of the DGA might look very different than previous ones thanks to Kennedy’s unorthodox, anti-science views about health.

The dietary guidelines are supposed to be refreshed every five years via a process that starts not long after the preceding dietary guidelines are published.

After an advisory committee of 20 nutrition experts — nominated by the public and appointed by the secretaries — publishes its recommendations, it’s up to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and Health and Human Services (HHS) to write the new guidelines, with the secretary of each providing final approval on what makes it in and what does not.

It’s this part of the process that’s most often criticized for being political. The DGA Committee (DGAC) does follow a scientific method, albeit one with flaws that might not weigh all the evidence fairly. The public has the opportunity to view the report and even to comment on it, meaning that everyone, in theory, could have a say in the final guidelines. But some voices, especially those from the food and agriculture industry, have always had a lot more sway than others in the time between the DGAC report and the release of the final guidelines.

Food policy experts blame that dynamic for the incongruity between the guidelines’ previous recommendations and our best understanding of nutrition science: Dairy isn’t a nutritional necessity for all age groups, but earlier guidelines presented dairy (or fortified soy alternatives) as such. Any level of alcohol consumption has negative effects, but the guidelines didn’t advise people to stop drinking, instead only stating that they do “not recommend that individuals who do not drink alcohol start drinking for any reason.”

These industry pressures haven’t fully reshaped previous dietary guidelines so much as blunted their clarity on a few issues and left a few outdated notions in place. But the creation of this year’s dietary guidelines has been subject to a different set of concerns thanks to the strong, often poorly supported convictions of RFK Jr. and the MAHA movement, which often butt heads with the food and agriculture industry.

What happened this year?

The 2025 DGAC report, released before Trump took office, mostly solidified the evidence behind previous guidelines. However, it took things a step further than before by recommending an emphasis on plant-based proteins like beans and nuts over meat, highlighting evidence that increased consumption of these foods increases fiber intake and avoids excess saturated fats and calories.

Where that report did raise eyebrows was its treatment of ultraprocessed foods (UPFs). The committee ultimately declined to make a broad recommendation on them, citing inconclusive evidence. On some level, this was unsurprising: Some processed foods are healthier than others, and researchers often disagree on what qualifies as a processed food in the first place. But critics saw at least a missed opportunity to provide helpful, clear guidance, and some even suggested industry influence and foul play.

At a glance, the new guidelines still have many of the same broad strokes as the old ones: They recommend the same number of servings of fruit and vegetables, and place the same overall limits on sodium. But they differ in putting protein as a headliner, moving the recommended amount up from the old 0.8 grams per kilogram of body weight daily up to 1.2-1.6 (functionally, this adds 1-2 servings of protein foods to the average person’s diet compared to the old recommendations). In both the text of the recommendations and the new, inverted pyramid, meat is the star of the show, with plant-based proteins as a buried secondary source.

The new guidelines also add an explicit recommendation to include full-fat dairy, a significant departure from old iterations that largely recommended lower-fat options. Confusingly, despite promoting full-fat dairy and red meat, the old recommendation for the saturated fat that comes from these foods — no more than 10 percent of daily calories — remains in place, a limit that would be difficult to stay under if one were to consume the recommended amounts of meat and dairy.

The new guidelines come out more explicitly against highly processed foods (the report’s synonym for UPFs, which the USDA and FDA are still working to define formally). They also take a stronger stance on added sugars and refined carbohydrates than previous iterations, urging people to avoid salty and sweet packaged processed foods with the warning that “no amount of added sugars or non-nutritive sweeteners is recommended or considered part of a healthy or nutritious diet,” and caution against artificial dyes and preservatives.

But in addition to calling out sugars, the guidelines also reduce the total amount of grain servings to 2-4, down by nearly a third. These guidelines also suggest removing refined carbohydrates (like white flour or white rice) from the diet entirely, a starker recommendation than older guidance that suggested making half of all servings whole grains.

Finally, the recommendations on alcohol are less specific, dropping drink limits per day and simply advising people to “consume less alcohol for better overall health.”

How are the new guidelines being received?

At the surface, these aren’t huge changes, and the diet that the new guidelines suggests certainly falls within a healthy eating pattern: It’s adequate in nutrients, avoids excess sugars, sodium and saturated fats, and prioritizes whole foods. So, why has the release of the new guidelines provoked controversy?

Diving into “The Scientific Foundation For The Dietary Guidelines For Americans” report is illuminating. For years, the DGAC and (to the extent that they followed its recommendations) the guidelines’ authors followed a process that combined our best understanding of nutrition science with a pragmatic understanding of socioeconomic challenges. The result: recommendations that were science-based, practical and that addressed the big health disparities between different parts of the U.S. population.

The Scientific Foundation report criticizes this “health equity” lens, arguing it had compromised the quality of the science and introduced irrelevant social factors into the process. The rest of the document catalogs and refutes many of the DGAC’s recommendations, using what it suggests is the gold standard of evidence in nutrition to advocate for greater red meat consumption, warn about the dangers of consuming highly processed foods and delegitimize plant-based foods and dietary patterns. Some of this evidence, like the argument that saturated fat from dairy products might not be as harmful as believed, holds up to scrutiny. But much of it bucks actual gold-standard nutrition science to embrace fringe theories and dubious claims, like overstating the potential for seed oils to cause inflammation. Several of those, like the suggestion that the old protein recommendations were barely enough to prevent starvation, were echoed in the press conference where the guidelines were released.

That embrace of fringe theories and political talking points is even more evident in the other launch materials. The new DGA website, realfood.gov, steers users through a series of snapshots about America’s chronic disease epidemic before misleadingly attributing these problems to the classic food pyramid and its faulty guidance.

Of course, the pyramid hasn’t been in use since 2011, and the outdated version shown hasn’t been used since the 1990s, something the new site doesn’t mention. It also neglects to point out that the guidelines have urged people to prioritize whole grains over refined carbohydrates for decades, claiming instead that they encouraged people to eat highly processed foods. So while it’s true that older iterations of the guidelines were less explicit in calling out processed foods — they did this indirectly by warning against excess fats, sodium and sugars — the new resources grossly misrepresent old nutrition guidance.

That’s largely in the service of making the new guidelines — with the banner of “eat real food” and its signature inverted pyramid — feel more revolutionary.

And what “real food” gets prioritized? The introduction for the new pyramid declares that “the war on protein is over,” then “flips” the old pyramid by placing proteins, fruits and vegetables at the top, oils and fats toward the middle and whole grains at the bottom. But there never was a war on protein, and while older guidelines didn’t emphasize getting as much protein as the new ones do, they didn’t limit it like they did sugar or sodium. Even the revised scientific report admitted most people were already getting more than the old recommendation of 0.8g per kilogram of body weight even if they weren’t trying to follow the guidelines.

Will the new guidelines matter?

That cost factor is critical to determining who will ultimately follow the dietary guidelines. For all the emphasis on keeping the new DGAs short and digestible for the public, education isn’t the primary obstacle holding people back from healthier eating: It’s cost and accessibility.

And while the Trump administration has pledged policy measures to support the new guidelines  — claiming it will deliver more options for SNAP recipients and alleviate food deserts, despite pushing a budget that will render millions ineligible for federal food assistance — the guidelines themselves don’t directly make food more affordable or easy to find, nor do they dictate the subsidy payments that determine what food we grow in the first place. In keeping with the Scientific Foundation’s promise to leave a health equity frame in the past, the new DGAs take an already expensive diet and place it even further out of reach by swapping out inexpensive, healthy servings of whole grains for more expensive meat. Even among those who can afford it, as one New York Times op-ed pointed out, guidance to increase protein intake might just be interpreted as “add” rather than “replace.”

Even if individual uptake of the new guidelines is low, that doesn’t mean they’re irrelevant: The DGAs form the basis of food purchased by the federal government. That may not seem like a big influence, but that dictates what’s served in VA hospitals, to military servicemembers, and after some implementation time, in public school lunches.

When it comes to those school lunches, the DGA’s hard line on processed foods could present a problem, as could the adjusted proportions of proteins and whole grains. Schools are heavily dependent on processed foods, but getting them to adopt less-processed options (or start cooking from scratch) isn’t just financially difficult — kids themselves haven’t always been eager to eat healthier lunches that incorporate more whole grains and produce. Throw in the financial burden of increasing the amount of minimally processed animal protein, and it becomes hard to imagine the new guidelines will translate smoothly into better and more nutritious school meals.

Of course, lunches themselves aren’t the only appearance the DGAs make in schools: They also form the basis of nutrition education. Given the mental hold the long-defunct food pyramid still has on policymakers decades later, nutrition education has a big influence. Ultimately, the guidelines could have the opportunity to shape how a future generation thinks about nutrition. With a climate crisis already unfolding before us, it’s an especially bad time to be entrenching the notion that healthy diets require environmentally intensive animal proteins and dairy, and that lower-impact diets are fundamentally deficient. 

Top photo by Alex Segre/Adobe Stock