On January 7, the US Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and US Department of Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins released the 2025-2030 Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGAs). This unveiling, among other changes, marks one of the most dramatic upheavals of federal nutrition policy Americans have seen in decades. The new pyramid is wrapped up neatly in a simple tagline of “eat real food” and rolls into the other changes Secretary Kennedy has made in service of his dream to Make America Healthy Again (MAHA). MAHA seeks, essentially, to return America to a simpler, “unprocessed” way of living to deal with the United States’ chronic disease epidemic.
Secretary Rollins described the 2025-2030 DGAs as “realigning our food system to support American farmers, ranchers, and companies that grow and produce real food.” The newly created “upside down” food pyramid recommends products like steak, full fat milk, and butter. The graphic places misleading visual emphasis on meat and dairy, while the guidelines themselves still recommend keeping saturated fats under 10% of one’s caloric intake. Meat and dairy products, meanwhile, are the leading saturated fat sources in the average American diet.
Furthermore, the conflicting guidelines call for more fruits and vegetables but cut the target to three servings of vegetables and two of fruit—roughly half of what previous guidelines recommended. The visual guide is confusing at best; the pyramid appears to discourage the entire bottom tier, even though the text itself promotes whole grains. The guidance on essential fatty acids is inconsistent. The foods highlighted are extremely low in essential fats, while the real sources, nuts and seeds, are completely absent. Doctor Frank Hu, professor of nutrition and epidemiology and chair of the Department of Nutrition at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, addressed the contradictions present in the new DGAs, saying, “the mixed messages surrounding saturated-fat-rich foods such as red meat, butter, and beef tallow may lead to confusion and potentially higher intake of saturated fat and increased LDL cholesterol and cardiovascular risk.” Dr. Hu also found the relatively small depiction of grains in the pyramid concerning, considering that the text in the guidelines suggests two to four servings a day.
Another worry of experts in the field is that the DGAs notably do not consider the environmental and socioeconomic impact of dietary recommendations. At a time when our climate demands urgent action, the DGAs promote increased consumption of beef and dairy—two of the most climate-stressing products on the planet. The omission of this factor is also socioeconomically problematic: environmentally inefficient food choice recommendations would increase other prices like food production costs and health insurance premiums. These rising prices and human health concerns would disproportionately affect those in poverty, who would face more difficulty affording basic necessities.
Experts in the fields of nutrition have raised concern about the process of establishing the new DGAs, citing a historical lack of transparency as well as deviation from the rigorous Health and Human Service standards used to determine federal nutrition recommendations. The bottom line is that certain aspects of the 2025-2030 DGAs send potentially dangerous mixed signals to the average American. Ultimately, the new DGAs do have genuinely helpful (if vague) guidance in their cautions against heavily processed foods and added sugars, but the overall message still falls short.
