Happy Friday, and welcome to Food Fix. We’ve sure had a busy start to 2026. If you’re not yet a paid subscriber you missed so many scoops this week!
On Tuesday morning, Food Fix was the first (by a mile) to report what is in the Dietary Guidelines for Americans. On Wednesday, Food Fix scooped the actual document and shared it with paid subscribers. We typically only publish Tuesdays and Fridays, but this week has just been packed full of news.
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Alright, let’s get to it –
Helena
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Making sense of our new dietary guidelines — and what comes next
The mood in the staid main hall of the Department of Health and Human Services on Thursday was jubilant. Billed as a “policy celebration” for the launch of the new dietary guidelines a day earlier, it felt much more like a campaign rally — the room was packed, everyone was holding big signs that said “Eat real food” atop images of foods like steak, broccoli and carrots. There were cowboy hats. Little kids bounced on laps and music blared.
After being met with a standing ovation, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told the audience that they’d gotten such “extraordinary” press coverage of the dietary guidelines that Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins had remarked backstage it was the first time she’d had good publicity, and she didn’t know how to handle it. He laughed.
At one point, NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya remarked the event was the first time he’d been treated to “walk out music.”
The Trump administration planned this celebration to try to gin up another day of press coverage for the guidelines and the snazzy new upside down food pyramid (a rebuke of the food pyramid the U.S. government used from 1992 to 2005), which Kennedy called “the most significant reset of federal nutrition policy in history.” This was all seen as such a big policy (and political) win that top officials are now planning a year-long dietary guidelines roadshow, zig zagging the country to talk about them, starting next week with a series of events with Rollins in Pennsylvania.
Mixed reaction: Of course, the press coverage was not altogether glowing (though certainly much more positive than Kennedy’s changes to the childhood vaccine schedule earlier in the week). The reaction to the dietary guidelines has been mixed. Most of the TV news clips I saw were positive to neutral. Many experts praised the simple messaging of “eat real food” and lauded the administration for clearly telling consumers to avoid highly-processed foods, which dominate the American diet and are increasingly linked to many poor health outcomes.
The administration also received praise for recommending Americans cut way back on added sugars (no more than 10 grams per meal and no added sugars at all for kids under age 10).
But there’s also been a healthy dose of criticism about the Trump administration’s claims to have “ended the war on saturated fat” — and the visual suggestion that beef, butter and whole fat dairy are back. It’s confusing too, because the guidelines kept the government’s longstanding advice to limit saturated fat intake to no more than 10 percent of total calories — conflicting advice that at once blunted some of the pushback in the scientific community and also disappointed low-carb advocates in the MAHA movement. It’s hard to lean in on beef, butter and whole fat dairy without blowing through the saturated fat limit the government still recommends.
Side note: Environmentalists raised concerns about the carbon footprint of such a diet, though sustainability considerations are considered outside the scope of the dietary guidelines — for now at least.
Some raised concerns about conflicts of interest among the outside experts that helped write the final guidelines — which seems rather hypocritical of Kennedy since he often lambastes past guidelines as being riddled with conflicts of interest. As STAT reported Thursday: “A group of researchers that formed the scientific basis of new dietary guidelines included people with financial ties to the beef and dairy industries, as well as food companies and other groups. … At least four of the nine panelists had recent financial relationships with beef or dairy groups.”
Some experts pushed back on the new recommendation that Americans dramatically increase their intake of protein, arguing it lacks scientific basis. Others hated that the guidelines eliminated specific advice on how much alcohol women and men should drink, instead vaguely telling Americans to “consume less alcohol for better overall health” — seen by some as a win for the alcohol industry.
Hot takes: Popular parenting author and influencer Emily Oster took to the New York Times opinion section to endorse the guidelines with the headline: “Kennedy Is Telling Americans How to Eat. It’s Not Crazy Advice.” (A significant endorsement, especially when you consider that data-driven Oster often debunks Kennedy’s vaccine claims.) Marion Nestle, perhaps the most influential voice in food policy, called the guidelines “cheerful, muddled, contradictory, ideological, retro” and overall “a mixed bag” — she also published a helpful table that breaks down in very simple terms how the new guidelines differ from the last iteration. Prominent food writer Jane Black wrote a helpful fact-check on some of the administration’s claims about its “ribeye revolution” on Consumed.
Bobby Mukkamala, president of the American Medical Association applauded the guidelines and pledged to bolster nutrition education for physicians. Author and wellness influencer Max Lugavere, a MAHA supporter, on Friday defended the guidelines and said people were misunderstanding them: “This is about flexibility, not dogma. The real takeaway isn’t ‘eat more butter,’ it’s eat real food, get enough protein, cut the ultra-processed noise, and choose what works best for your body and lifestyle.”
Kevin Klatt, an assistant professor of nutritional sciences at the University of Toronto, who’s grown increasingly influential on social media wrote about the guidelines and the new graphic, which he called “The Rancher’s Pyramid” due to its favorable treatment of beef and whole fat dairy. After doing a deep dive into all the documents, he concluded: “Depending on which part of it you look at, you can conclude that not much has changed or things have changed dramatically,” Klatt writes.
Kennedy’s take: During the celebration on Thursday, Kennedy was radical in his messaging as he warned Americans to avoid the majority of the U.S. food supply: “My message is clear: Eat real food. If it doesn’t come from the ground, or the water, or the air, don’t eat it. If it comes wrapped in a package that is clear, that the whole thing is a package, don’t eat it.”
He also struck a conspiratorial tone about the history of dietary advice in the U.S.
“Our government has been lying to us to protect corporate profit taking — telling us that these food-like substances were beneficial to our health,” Kennedy said. “Federal policy promoted and subsidized highly-processed food and refined carbohydrates and turned a blind eye to the cataclysmic consequences. Today, the lies stop.”
This is quite a claim, especially considering that the last iteration of the dietary guidelines was issued on Trump’s watch in 2020. The administration cared so little about it they announced the guidelines between Christmas and New Years with no press event or fanfare. It’s true that the government in the past hasn’t explicitly told people to avoid processed foods, but the guidelines have long urged Americans to eat more vegetables, fruits, grains, dairy and lean proteins. It’s just been muddled in how it was communicated — and typically few resources are dedicated to spreading these messages.
Nutrition education has been a very low priority in the U.S. We actually ditched the food pyramid in 2011 — during the Obama administration — and switched to MyPlate, which was a much simpler message. Research has shown, however, that the vast majority of Americans have never heard of MyPlate.
Does any of this matter? This brings us to a very important point: Americans don’t follow the dietary guidelines. In 2022, a CDC study found only 25 percent of Americans had heard of MyPlate and even fewer — 8 percent — reported trying to follow its advice. The guidelines matter and they also don’t. They matter because they affect the national perception of what we should be eating. They matter because of how they ultimately govern federal nutrition programs (more on this in a minute), but we cannot blame them for our diet-related disease crisis. And we also cannot expect that they will fix everything.
All of this will prove to be all hat, no cattle unless this administration decides to operationalize these changes across the government. As it stands now, most food and agriculture policy is simply not aligned with these guidelines.
For example, Kennedy on Thursday mentioned subsidizing highly-processed foods in the past tense, as if it is no longer happening, which is simply not true. Farm subsidies haven’t structurally changed — in fact, the Trump administration has increased direct payments to commodity farmers growing the ingredients that fuel the processed food industry.
“Our farm policy still rewards commodity inputs and consolidated supply chains, while fruits and vegetables remain harder to grow at scale and harder for families to afford,” wrote Angela Huffman, president of Farm Action, this week. “That mismatch is a policy choice. If the government wants Americans to eat real food, it has to start supporting farmers who grow it.”
Notably, top officials are saying that they plan to implement these guidelines quickly — something that would require serious rulemaking, particularly to make any big changes in school meals programs, which currently rely heavily on highly-processed foods to affordably feed some 30 million schoolchildren each day. Asked about school lunch, Rollins told reporters Thursday that she was aiming to get something moving (ostensibly a proposed rule) by this fall.
“There’s a lot we have to do, understanding that resources are needed and there’s a whole infrastructure that has to be built,” Rollins said.
In other words, flipping the pyramid is the easy part.
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What I’m reading
The two sides of America’s health secretary (The Atlantic). “Since he was confirmed as Health and Human Services secretary early last year, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has previewed big changes to the Dietary Guidelines for Americans—the government’s go-to guide on what to eat, and how much of it,” writes Nicholas Florko. “Chief among those supposedly forthcoming changes that Kennedy has promised is a dramatic rethinking of how the United States deals with saturated fat. Surprisingly, the new guidelines, which were released earlier today, retain the exact same recommendation about saturated fat that Kennedy seems to loathe. What happened? Despite all of Kennedy’s bluster, the revisions appear to be built much more around incremental change than around any all-out war on established health wisdom. Regardless of the challenges ahead, the release of the guidelines is a milestone in Kennedy’s tenure as HHS secretary, and it’s indicative of the way that he’s approached food regulation generally. The strategy marks a sharp departure from Kennedy’s willingness to impose his own beliefs on another major priority area: vaccines.”
SNAP recipients are worried about future benefits (Supermarket News). “After enduring a government shutdown that paused the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) for weeks, most SNAP recipients are concerned about future benefit delays, according to data released Wednesday by Numerator,” reports Bill Wilson. “Three-quarters of SNAP recipients said they are somewhat or very concerned about what lies ahead, while 42% said they are not confident their household will continue to qualify for benefits. In October, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said it would require recipients to reapply for monthly disbursements. Around the time of the shutdown, SNAP recipients adjusted their shopping habits, according to Numerator. Changes included buying less overall (44%), choosing lower-priced brands (43%) and shopping at lower-priced retailers (36%).”
Many people who come off GLP-1 drugs regain weight within 2 years, review suggests (CNN). “Many people who stop using weight loss drugs will return to their previous weight within two years, a new review of existing research has found,” reports Jack Guy. “This rate of weight regain is significantly faster than that seen in those who have lost weight by changing other lifestyle factors, such as diet and exercise, rather than relying on GLP-1 medications, researchers from the University of Oxford report in a paper published Wednesday in The BMJ journal. GLP-1 medications have become widely used in recent years, and more than 15 million Americans are now losing weight with the drugs.”
In the U.S., hunger is often hidden. But it can still leave scars on body and mind (NPR). “Hunger in America looks very different from the stereotype of malnourished children trying to survive a famine in a low-income country far away. In the U.S., hunger is often much less obvious, but it’s there — in the disruptive behavior of a third-grader who missed breakfast or the chronic anxiety of parents carefully rationing out boxes of cheap macaroni for their children,” writes Karen Brown. “In 2023, 13% of American households were considered ‘food insecure’ by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. There’s no more recent public data, because the Trump administration canceled the annual survey, calling it ‘subjective, liberal fodder.’”
The end of SNAP-Ed leaves underserved communities with even fewer resources (Civil Eats). “Phyllis Pacheco, 72, lives about 6 miles from the New Mexico border in an unincorporated community called Lobatos, so small that its mailing address is nearby Antonito, Colorado. … Pacheco took cooking classes offered by Conejos County twice in 2020, healthy food education that taught her to shop better, read food package labels more effectively, and prepare more nutritious dishes,” writes Laura Reiley. “Those healthy cooking classes are a casualty of a Trump administration decision to end SNAP-Ed, the longstanding educational arm of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). … The One Big Beautiful Bill Act eliminated the program in July, giving program administrators 90 days to dismantle a nationwide network of nutrition classes and outreach efforts. … Some states, like Georgia, will be able to keep their SNAP-Ed programs intact for about a year due to other funding sources, but other states, like Colorado, are already experiencing significant losses, starting with staff layoffs at nutrition programs.”
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