New Dietary Guidelines for Americans released Wednesday echo past recommendations but also include a nod to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s “Make America Healthy Again” campaign — urging Americans to prioritize protein and “healthy fats” and limit consumption of ultra-processed foods and added sugars.
“My message is clear, eat real food,” Kennedy said at a White House press briefing on Wednesday.
The previous guidance, released in 2020, contained nearly 150 pages of extensive recommendations on how to follow a healthy diet and incorporate healthy foods into the diets of Americans of every age. The new recommendations from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the U.S. Department of Agriculture fulfill Kennedy’s promise that they would be only a few pages but would be supplemented by hundreds of pages of research and justification.
The latest update includes an image of an inverted pyramid that puts meats, cheeses and vegetables at the widest part at the top, flipping the long-standing vision of the American diet and getting rid of the rounded MyPlate.
Officials say following the guidance “can help prevent the onset of chronic disease or slow its progression” — a major talking point of the MAHA campaign. In addition to recommendations on protein, sugar and processed foods, they tell Americans that when adding fat to their meals, “prefer oils that contain essential fatty acids, such as olive oil. Other options could include butter or beef tallow, another favorite of Kennedy’s.”
But the updated guidelines raised questions from some experts who worried they placed too much emphasis on red meat and dairy products, but also received early approval from some influential voices.
“The American Medical Association applauds the administration’s new dietary guidelines, which emphasize highly processed foods, sugary drinks and excess sodium that exacerbate heart disease, diabetes, obesity and other chronic diseases,” Dr. Bobby Mukamara, an otolaryngologist, head and neck surgeon and president of the American Medical Association, said in a statement. “This guideline confirms that food is medicine and provides patients and physicians with clear direction to improve their health.”
This guide helps develop school meals, the Women, Infants, and Children Program (WIC), and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Local health departments will also be closely monitoring these updated dietary guidelines.
“The primary benefit of the Dietary Guidelines is to provide people with a tool to help them stay healthy. Our nation has an obesity epidemic that contributes to a wide range of chronic diseases,” said Lori Tremmel Freeman, CEO of the National Association of County and City Health Officials. “The diet and exercise guidelines help us focus people’s attention on how to stay healthy and avoid chronic disease.
“Revisions and reviews of dietary guidelines are of course always welcomed by the public health and wider health community, particularly when things have not been looked at for some time or when there is new or changing data.”
What’s new in the guide
Previous guidelines recommended 13 to 56 grams of protein per day, or 5 to 35 percent of calories. By comparison, the new recommendations are based on body weight: 1.2 to 1.6 grams per kilogram, which equates to 81.6 to 109 grams for a 150-pound person.
The updated guidelines favor full-fat dairy products with no added sugar, requiring people on a 2,000-calorie diet to eat three servings a day; the previous guidelines recommended three cups a day.
The new fiber recommendation is two to four servings per day, while the 2020 guideline target is 14 grams per 1,000 calories.
The latest update will include images of an inverted pyramid—a long-term visual of flipping the American diet. – U.S. Department of Health and Human Services/USDA
Ultra-processed foods are specifically mentioned in the new guidance: “Avoid highly processed packaged foods, prepared foods, ready-to-eat foods, or other salty or sweet foods, such as chips, cookies, and candies with added sugar and sodium (salt). Instead, prioritize nutrient-dense foods and home-prepared meals. When eating out, choose nutrient-dense foods.”
The updated guidelines echo the 2020 version, urging “drink less, improve your health,” although they remove previous recommendations of no more than two drinks a day for men and one drink a day for women.
New guidelines say babies should be fed breast milk for the first six months of life or, if breast milk is not available, iron-fortified formula. Breastfeeding can continue for 2 years or more, but formula feeding should stop after 12 months. Added sugar should be avoided from infancy and early childhood to age 10.
The ‘nuances’ of ultra-processed foods
Certain foods are processed to varying degrees, said Dr. David Serres, director of medical nutrition and professor of medicine at the Institute of Human Nutrition at Columbia University Medical Center in New York. He agreed to limit consumption of ultra-processed foods but said he wanted the public to understand there were nuances.
“What junk food is and how it is defined can be graded,” said Serres, who was not involved in the new dietary guidelines. “But in general, if people want to know what I think they should do, they should eat food that looks as close as possible to what it looks like on the ground, attached to plants, on hooves or swimming in the ocean.”
For decades, previous dietary guidelines recommended that everyone over the age of 2 consume low-fat or fat-free dairy products and recommended saturated fat intake be less than 10% of daily calories.
The new guidelines echo only 10 percent of the recommendations, although they also note that “more high-quality research is needed to determine which types of dietary fat best support long-term health.”
Some studies have found that people who consume more dairy products have a lower risk of cardiovascular disease than those who consume less dairy products.
“Some of the saturated fats found in full-fat dairy, including yogurt, cheese and milk, are less inflammatory than other types of animal fats, such as beef or tallow. But they are higher in calories. Full-fat dairy is no better than low-fat dairy—it’s simply not as dangerous as we once thought. But eating full-fat dairy can add an extra 200 or more calories per day, further increasing your risk of obesity,” says Bethany Doerfler, a registered dietitian at Northwestern Medical Center in Chicago. said in a report. e-mail.
“More than 50 years of well-designed nutrition research has demonstrated the protective effects of a dietary pattern rich in plants, unsaturated fats, and limited processed animal proteins. This pattern can reduce the risk of chronic diseases such as obesity, cancer, and cardiovascular disease,” Doerfler said. “In addition, we need to prioritize access to healthy foods. Interpreting definitions and guidance is important, but access to healthy foods remains critical.”
Dr. Walter Willett, professor of epidemiology and nutrition at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston and one of the most cited nutritionists internationally, worries that the updated guidelines will be used to promote high intakes of red meat and dairy products, “which will not lead to an optimally healthy diet or a healthy planet,” he said in an email.
“Sugar-sweetened beverages are the most serious problem, and this was overlooked in early reports from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Make America Healthy Again commission,” Willett said.
However, the new guidelines do recommend against drinking sugary drinks such as sodas, juice drinks and energy drinks.
How the guidelines are developed
The data upon which any kind of medical guidance or scientific review is based can change as more research is completed, which seems to be why dietary guidelines change over time, Serres said.
For example, one version of the guideline could make recommendations based on observational studies that show only associations. But randomized controlled trials can then be conducted to measure cause and effect, and guidelines can be updated to reflect new findings.
Every five years, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the U.S. Department of Agriculture update federal dietary guidelines based on the latest research.
These guidelines are often used by medical professionals and policymakers to help determine what students eat in schools, what doctors recommend to patients and what people can buy with food stamps.
The guidance affects programs such as school meals, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and the Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) program, which is expected to serve nearly 7 million pregnant women, new mothers, and young children. Kennedy and Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rawlings have urged states to restrict foods considered unhealthy in SNAP, though retailers and health experts have questioned whether the programs are ready to implement such sweeping changes, especially when there are mixed data on whether it will improve diet quality and health.
Typically, before each new Dietary Guidelines report is released, a scientific advisory committee reviews the latest research and provides its own recommendations to the secretaries of the USDA and Health and Human Services departments to help inform the development of the guidelines.
But Kennedy criticized the development process and promised a much shortened set of recommendations that would emphasize whole foods.
Kennedy also called the Dietary Guidelines for Americans “outdated” and said he was pushing for Head Start, which provides early childhood education and other services to children and families, to switch from low-fat dairy products to full-fat dairy products, including whole milk.
In the Trump administration’s “Making Our Kids Healthy Again” report released in September, federal officials noted that “USDA and HHS will further reform the future… development process, including the structure and membership of advisory committees and scientific review.”
Willett said he was “seriously concerned” about the reform.
“The 2025 Dietary Guidelines for Americans Scientific Advisory Committee was carefully selected based on extensive experience and knowledge in many relevant fields and careful assessment of conflicts of interest. The review process took approximately three years, with many opportunities for public comment,” Willett said in an email. He added that “none of this happened” under the Trump administration’s procedures.
“I am concerned that the CDC Vaccine Review Committee process will be reactivated, which purged those with knowledge and experience in vaccine effectiveness and safety, leading states to establish their own vaccine review processes because CDC recommendations are no longer deemed trustworthy,” Willett said, referring to the sudden firing and replacement of members of the CDC’s Vaccine Advisory Committee and subsequent major changes in U.S. vaccine policy.
CNN’s Sarah Owermohle and Kristen Rogers contributed to this report.
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