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Alright, let’s get to it –
Helena
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What to expect from the dietary guidelines revamp next month
The Trump administration is expected to issue a substantial revamp of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGAs) early next month — and it’s going to be a doozy.
If you’ve been around here a while, you may recall that top cabinet officials have been saying that the new guidelines are coming very soon since last summer.
Both HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins have said publicly that they plan to make big changes to the guidelines — more meat, more saturated fat, less ultra-processed foods, to name a few biggies. But as is often the case in Washington, changing anything is usually harder than it seems.
The stakes: Changing the nation’s nutrition advice is a high stakes endeavor. First, there’s our health. While most Americans don’t actually follow the guidelines, they matter a lot for consumer perception of what we’re supposed to be eating. Federal nutrition programs like the National School Lunch Program also have to follow the guidelines, so they eventually dictate what tens of millions of American schoolchildren eat each day. And then there’s the food and agriculture industries, which invest huge sums of money to try to influence the guidelines so their products are treated more favorably.
The chatter: Trying to pin down what’s coming in the guidelines in just a few weeks has felt like trying to nail down jello — and I think it’s because this is all still being worked out by HHS and USDA, the two departments that jointly issue the guidelines.
This process has taken longer than administration officials initially thought, but I do expect the guidelines to be released next month. It sounds like Jan. 5 or Jan. 6 could be the day, but this has not been confirmed.
In the meantime, rumors are flying around about what the guidelines will say and whether there’s going to be a revamped food pyramid as the new image. (Sidenote: We haven’t had the food pyramid since 2011, when the government officially switched over to MyPlate for nutrition messaging, even if most people still don’t know what this is.) At one point, it seemed like we might get an upside down food pyramid. I do not know where this will land, but triangle-shaped seems like a good bet at this point.
I expect there will be a major focus on protein — perhaps even over fruits and vegetables, which have long been the base of U.S. dietary advice — that category of course includes meat and eggs, but also dairy and (maybe?) plant-based proteins as well.
The guidelines will also likely emphasize vegetables, fruits, healthy fats and whole grains. (It seems like grains in general may be downgraded quite a bit — but again, I haven’t seen the final policy. Recall that grains made up the base of the old food pyramid.)
UPF watch: I will be super interested to see what the guidelines say — or don’t — about ultra-processed foods. Everyone has been expecting the guidelines will urge Americans to cut back on these products — which make up the majority of the U.S. diet — but I’ve also noticed that top officials have been using a different term lately: highly-processed foods. This all sounds like silly semantics (and it is), but HHS and USDA are in a bit of a weird spot because UPFs have not been formally defined by the federal government (they are working on it).
Test of MAHA: Zooming out of the details, the DGAs offer a big test of the power of MAHA within the administration because some of the expected changes are real bad for parts of the food industry (explicitly urging less ultra-processed foods alone would be a huge L for packaged food companies).
As Jerold Mande, CEO of Nourish Science and a former Obama administration official put it, the guidelines are basically round three of a simmering fight between industry and the “Make America Healthy Again” movement.
“The DGAs are round three,” Mande told me this week. “Round one was the first MAHA report, and MAHA won. Round two was the second MAHA report, and Big Food won. Who wins round three? We will find out in January. Big Food wants to maintain the status quo. MAHA wants historic change.”
As Civil Eats reported this week, health experts are super worried about how this is going to all play out. Many in the nutrition world are fine with urging less ultra-processed foods, but they see loosening up saturated fat advice as antithetical to where the evidence is right now — and ultimately bad for public health. (There’s a lot of debate over saturated fats. You can read more about it from the New York Times or STAT.)
“With control over the DGA now in Kennedy’s hands, nutrition experts are concerned that administration officials will disregard decades of science and in turn create confusion and distrust in the document,” writes Rebekah Alvey.
Chaos reigns: Setting aside the debates over each nutrient — which get heated! — I do think there’s going to be a high level of chaos after this rollout. We’re going to have some nutrition science experts loudly criticize the guidelines as not following the scientific evidence. I think we’re likely to see something similar play out that we’ve seen with vaccines, where some groups (in the case of vaccines, the American Academy of Pediatrics) come up with their own alternative advice. It’s going to be confusing — and it’s going to leave a lot of Americans not sure who they can trust.
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What I’m reading
The big tobacco playbook comes for your Oreos (The Atlantic). “Without fail, any corporation accused of conspiring against public health will be compared to Big Tobacco. Earlier this month, one such comparison ended up in a lawsuit. In the first such case of its kind, San Francisco sued several of the nation’s largest food companies. … “I ran the analogy by several nutrition experts,” writes Nicholas Florko. “‘Of course, food is more complicated than tobacco,’ Marion Nestle, an emeritus professor at New York University, told me. However, there are notable similarities between the two industries and the products they sell, she said. Researchers do know that ultra-processed foods such as Coca-Cola and Pringles are among the biggest contributors to obesity and other diet-related diseases. … The two industries also use similar strategies to cast doubt on the dangers of their products. Like Big Tobacco, food companies have also attempted to convince consumers that some of their unhealthy products might actually be good for them.”
The peculiar politics of whole milk’s return to U.S. schools (STAT). “The Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act exemplifies the contradictions of the current moment in the politics of nutrition,” Sarah Todd writes. “On one hand, experts like Kenney are glad to see kids getting more access to nondairy milk that offers similar nutritional benefits to cow’s milk. Lactose intolerance affects large swaths of the U.S. population, particularly people of Asian and African descent. Other children may be raised in vegan families or simply prefer plant-based options. On the other hand, the move to get whole milk back in schools is a piece of the Make America Healthy Again movement’s larger mission to rescue the reputation of saturated fat. That troubles nutrition researchers who say the science linking higher consumption of saturated fat to heart disease risk hasn’t changed, though there is an ongoing debate about whether the saturated fat in full-fat dairy may be an exception.”
Heart Association revives theory that light drinking may be good for you (New York Times). “For a while, it seemed the notion that light drinking was good for the heart had gone by the wayside, debunked by new studies and overshadowed by warnings that alcohol causes cancer. Now the American Heart Association has revived the idea in a scientific review that is drawing intense criticism, setting off a new round of debate about alcohol consumption,” reports Roni Caryn Rabin. “The paper, which sought to summarize the latest research and was aimed at practicing cardiologists, concluded that light drinking — one to two drinks a day — posed no risk for coronary disease, stroke, sudden death and possibly heart failure, and may even reduce the risk of developing these conditions. Controversy over the influential organization’s review has been simmering since it was published in the association’s journal Circulation in July.”
Minnesota ordered to verify SNAP recipients within 30 days (Newsweek). “The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has ordered the state of Minnesota to recertify all of its SNAP recipients within the next 30 days following a fraud scandal in the state,” reports Aliss Higham. “The letter, which was posted by Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins on X on Tuesday, orders Minnesota to take part in a ‘pilot program’ that will require all beneficiaries in certain counties in the North Star State to recertify their eligibility for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits. More than 60 people were convicted over involvement in stealing hundreds of millions of dollars from a federally funded nutrition program during the coronavirus pandemic, which has drawn the ire of the Donald Trump administration. It is also the earliest indication that the USDA is making good on its promise to have all SNAP recipients reapply for their benefits. Rollins recently said the federal agency planned to make all 42 million beneficiaries go through the application process again in an effort to root out alleged fraud in the program.”
Moderna gets funding for H5 pandemic influenza vaccine (BioPharma Dive). “Moderna said Thursday its experimental bird flu vaccine, which was cut from federal funding earlier this year, will receive up to $54.3 million from a global coalition to advance the candidate,” reports Delilah Alvarado. “The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, or CEPI, a public-private global partnership working to develop vaccines against pandemics, agreed to fund Moderna’s candidate mRNA-1018 against H5 avian influenza into Phase 3 testing. Under the Biden administration, the experimental vaccine was awarded over $700 million in government contracts from the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, or BARDA. Those contracts were later canceled by the Department of Health and Human Services under Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a major critic of messenger RNA technology.”
Why specialty grocers are thriving post-pandemic (Grocery Dive). “The grocery industry has faced high prices, record-breaking inflation, price-sensitive consumers and, most recently, the looming threat of tariffs over the past five years — yet specialty grocers have been mostly unfazed by the chaos,” reports Peyton Bigora. “In Q3 2024, specialty grocers outperformed traditional grocers consistently in monthly year-over-year visit growth and, in Q2 of 2025, even overtook discount grocers in foot traffic growth, according to Placer.ai reports. But this success wasn’t a given, as many specialty grocers took a serious hit during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet experts credit the COVID-19 pandemic for boosting consumer awareness of health and wellness, spurring them to seek out the products specialty grocers are known for. As specialty grocers look to navigate post-pandemic industry headwinds, another key force is helping them: high-income shoppers.”
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