U.S. dietary guidelines on a collision course with MAHA

Axios

08-07-2025

The high-stakes effort to set nutrition standards for the food industry and government programs like Head Start is about to get a makeover from Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Why it matters: It's an opportunity for Kennedy to exert more leverage over food and beverage companies and the products they make after narrower actions like pressing them to voluntarily eliminate synthetic food dyes.
But experts worry Kennedy will short-circuit the evidence-based process behind the 2025-2030 Dietary Guidelines for Americans and use the requirements to ban targets of his public health movement, like seed oils or sugary drinks.
"The biggest impact he can have on food in America is what's in the dietary guidelines," said Jerold Mande, former deputy undersecretary of agriculture and CEO of Nourish Science.
"The industry's worst nightmare [is] that there's substantial changes in the dietary guidelines," Mande said. "I've just recently been in a number of meetings with CEOs of big food companies. They're not looking forward to wholesale changes."
State of play: The guidelines are issued every five years and underpin federal nutrition policies. They dictate such basics as what goes into free school lunches and even what soldiers eat.
They also influence what doctors and nutritionists tell patients and the content on public-facing tools like the USDA's MyPlate and its predecessor the food pyramid.
Kennedy and Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins have said they're pushing ahead with new recommendations that could be released soon.
The expectation is a Make America Healthy Again-inspired revamp would not only call for more of a focus on locally sourced whole foods, but could call for the return of meat with high fat content, whole milk and beef tallow, in the name of healthier alternatives.
What we're hearing: Kennedy said he intends to have the guidelines, which can be hundreds of pages long, published in a more consumer-friendly four-page document by August.
During a speech at Texas A&M in April, he indicated he'd scrap a scientific report that a panel of nutrition experts issued under the Biden administration in December to guide this year's update. It called for eating less meat and saturated fats, and more fiber-rich legumes, fruits and vegetables.
MAHA-aligned nutritionists suggest existing guidelines downplay nutritional inadequacies and mistakenly stress the health benefits of beans, peas and lentils over animal products.
"There are myriad problems with an approach that oversimplifies nutrition science — not the least of which is that lawmakers can't make sound policy off of a short high-level overview," a food industry executive told Axios, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to discuss the deliberations.
Experts point to a number of areas Kennedy could change:
Saturated fats: The Dietary Guidelines have long recommended limiting saturated fat consumption to less than 10% of daily calories to reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease, said Jessi Silverman, a dietician at the Center for Science in the Public Interest.
The organization fears Kennedy will instead promote disputed ideas about the benefits of beef tallow and increased consumption of meat and whole fat dairy products, she said.
Additives: While food manufacturers defend their ingredients as safe, experts have been largely supportive of scrutiny around additives like artificial food dyes.
Schools have already been purchasing products without synthetic dyes in response to limits in some states, said Diane Pratt-Heavner, spokesperson for the School Nutrition Association.
"The colors are a no-brainer because there's enough question about their safety that they really shouldn't be there. Just get rid of them," said Marion Nestle, emerita professor of nutrition at New York University.
Ultra-processed foods: Another area of focus is ultra-processed foods and their role contributing to obesity.
But the science is more complicated than it may seem, Silverman said. "Ultra-processed as a category includes so many different foods that have a variety of different nutritional profiles," she noted, adding it's not yet clear what about ultra-processed foods is driving this correlation.
School meals are already the most regulated in the country, with districts stretched to meet limits for calories, saturated fat, sodium and sugar. Upending those goals without a corresponding increase in funding would be an enormous challenge, she said.
Alcohol: Specific recommendations to limit consumption to one drink a day for women and two drinks a day for men are expected to be eliminated from the guidelines, Reuters reported.
Reality check: Studies show the vast majority of Americans' diets (86%) don't meet to the U.S. dietary guidelines, Mande pointed out.
So far, Kennedy has avoided mandating changes, raising questions about how willing he is to lower the hammer on the food industry.
The bottom line: The dietary guidelines are inherently a political document and both Kennedy and Rollins aren't legally obligated to follow expert advice.