Takeaways from the Updated Dietary Guidelines for Americans

Last week, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services released a new edition of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGAs). The DGAs are updated every five years and are designed to reflect current science to help Americans make healthy dietary choices. Although individuals may (or may not) change their own personal eating patterns, the regulations for the federal food programs (like National School Breakfast and Lunch) are required to reflect the DGAs. This process to update regulations sometimes takes years, but this is how the system is supposed to work.

Now for the million-dollar question: Are the 2025-2030 updates to the DGAs a step in the right direction or not?

The answer is – it’s complicated. There are some clear messages we can all get behind – no one is going to argue with the advice to eat real, whole foods. On the other hand, clearly promoting red meat, butter, and full-fat dairy while also telling people to limit their saturated fat intake is confusing. Thus, it’s difficult to predict what the impact of this report will be in the long run.

Below, we’ve outlined some of our takeaways on what’s good, what’s bad, and what’s still unknown after this update.

The Good, The Bad, and The Unknown

In December 2024, the 2025 Dietary Guidelines Committee submitted a scientific report based on two years of meetings and public comments to the Secretaries of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). This report was created by a committee of researchers and health professionals led by Drs. Sarah Booth (Tufts University) and Angela Odoms-Young (Cornell University). It was designed to serve as the basis for the update to the DGAs. However, because the report incorporated “a health equity lens,” the current administration decided to start again with a new set of scientific reviews. This Scientific Foundation report provides a helpful table that shows where the original committee’s review of the evidence was fully accepted, partially accepted, or rejected from the new report.

A few takeaways:

The Good

• Prioritize Whole Foods: The tagline of the new DGAs is “Eat Real Food.” This is a solid message and consistent with the first part of Michael Pollan’s 2007 quote: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” We support strategies to limit intake ultra-processed (or their term, “highly processed”) foods and have written recently on how this can realistically be achieved in schools.

• Limit Added Sugars and Non-Nutritive Sweeteners: Another area where we applaud the new DGAs is the message that children should stay away from added sugars, specifically soft drinks, fruit drinks, energy drinks, and non-nutritive (i.e., artificial) sweeteners. Couldn’t agree more.

The Bad

• An Inverted Food Guide Pyramid: Perhaps the buzziest update to the DGAs is that the food guide pyramid from 1992 (over three decades ago!) was resurrected and flipped upside-down. Our take is that they needed to dig into the archives of DGA graphics to find one that they could claim was the opposite of the new advice. Indeed, the messaging that “for decades we’ve been misled” reminds me of a lesson in graduate school about popular diet books: you always start off saying “The medical establishment has been lying to you! They don’t want you to know the truth about how to lose weight! Buy this book with all the answers!” A more accurate adjustment of the MyPlate graphic would have been to keep the dairy; keep half of the plate vegetables and fruits; and shift the line on the other half of the plate to have more protein and fewer grains. But that would have been much less dramatic. Rest in peace, MyPlate.

• Mixed Messaging about Saturated Fats: The updated DGAs maintain the current, evidence-based recommendation that saturated fat consumption should not exceed more than 10% of total daily calories. However, the guidance and visuals contradict this recommendation by heavily promoting products high in saturated fat, like butter, whole milk, and beef tallow.

• Animal instead of Plant-Based Proteins: There isn’t a chickpea or lentil to be found in the upside-down pyramid (although, to be fair, there are a few nuts and some beans on top of the (white?!) rice). The heavy-handed promotion of animal proteins and fats is a win for the dairy and meat industries, with whom some of the second set of experts have financial ties (see the last part of the Scientific Foundation report).

The Unknown

• Environmental Guidance: Perhaps unsurprisingly in light of previous controversies, the new DGAs do not mention the environmental impact of our diet. To learn more about the importance of thinking about food and the environment together, see work by the EAT-Lancet Commission.

• Access and Affordability: The fact sheet says that these guidelines prioritize health outcomes, not health equity, and are for all Americans. They also say that “our culture and food procurement programs must change to enable Americans to access affordable, healthy, real food,” and they “welcome all stakeholders to be part of this conversation in the coming year.” How this administration plans to use federal policy to improve access and lower prices remains an unanswered question.