How the nation’s new dietary guidelines might backfire
A conversation with nutrition expert Barbara Laraia
When the federal government issued its recommendations for a healthy diet last week, many nutritionists and health care providers were appalled.
Alongside well-supported advice to reduce sodium intake and avoid processed foods, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Department of Health and Human Services recommended increasing red meat and whole milk and emphasizing protein at every meal. Whole grains were de-emphasized, as were plant proteins. And beef tallow, a rendered fat that cardiologists have long sought to limit, became, as the New York Times put it, “an unexpected breakout star.”
We asked Barbara Laraia, professor of public health nutrition in the division of Community Health Sciences at UC Berkeley School of Public Health, to guide us through the new recommendations.
Secretaries Kennedy and Rollins call the new dietary guidelines a foundation to make America healthy again. Do you agree they would, in fact, make followers healthy?
First, I applaud the general theme and tag line—Eat Real Food—of the 2025-2030 Dietary Guidelines.
Second, I think the direct message of choosing water; eating fruits and vegetables throughout the day; focusing on whole grains; and limiting highly-processed foods, added sugars, and refined carbohydrates is consistent with past dietary guidelines and clearly stated.
Third, the 10-page public-facing document is easier to read and digest than past dietary guidelines. The current guidelines explain how to identify added sugar and restate the message to limited added sugars throughout the document, including in the fruit, vegetable, dairy, and meat sections. Consumers will get this message as will the food industry. Who knows, we might start seeing reformulation of new food products.
Why don’t most Americans already eat a healthy diet?
There are many reasons for this: the high cost of whole, fresh, nutrient-dense foods (e.g., fresh fruits and vegetables, seeds, nuts, and fish); the inaccessibility of fresh foods in many neighborhoods (think social determinants of health); high levels of food insecurity (15% of US Households or about 9 million households); and a food system that produces over 25,000 new food products each year, all of which are highly processed.
The most common new foods are mainly sugar-sweetened beverages, snack foods, candies and frozen meals. There has been growth in organic produce as well as many high protein–based snacks, shakes, and supplements.
There is a decreasing trend in new sugar-sweetened beverage products, but Americans face a very dynamic food system, filled mostly with processed foods, new food every year (upwards of 90% of new foods fail), and difficulty accessing foods of high nutritional quality.
Lack of adherence to the past dietary guidelines was not the fault of the guidelines but of the food system. Where the guidelines are implemented, such as school meals, there is strong evidence that school meals are nutritious, and often more nutritious than lunches brought from home.
Therefore, I do not believe that the new dietary guidelines will be any more successful than past dietary guidelines in making Americans healthy again. They are, after all, guidelines. Unless they have a major impact on the food system as a whole.
The dietary advice seems contradictory. If one ate the foods recommended, wouldn't it be hard to keep to a limit of 10 percent of daily calories from saturated fats?
This is probably one of the more perplexing issues for me to decipher. This diet meets the new recommendations for servings of fruits, vegetables, protein, dairy, and fiber. But it is basically a high fat, high protein, low carbohydrate diet. This has not been the recommendation of past guidelines and is a clear departure from the literature. Furthermore, as you can imagine, this real food diet is quite expensive with our current food prices.
Are the recommendations too protein-heavy? How much protein does the average person need at different stages of life? Some critics have taken issue with the guidelines’ failure to encourage plant proteins. Would you like to see people eat more plant proteins?
While there is no clear literature on the need to increase protein recommendations from 0.8 grams/kilogram to 1.2 to 1.6 grams/kilogram, the higher protein intake is in line with what Americans are eating on average. For body builders, people doing resistance training, people trying to build muscle mass, the new range of protein intake has been the recommendation. Protein intake should not exceed 2.0 grams/kilogram.
That being said, when one macronutrient (protein, fat, carbohydrate) is increased in the diet, another macronutrient by default is decreased. By virtue of the new protein recommendations, promotion of meat and full-fat dairy, the proportion of the diet that is made up of carbohydrates can only be decreased.
The promotion of red meat and full fat dairy is messaged in many places. The lack of messaging for the full range of plant-based proteins is disconcerting because it can lead to higher risk of heart disease. There is a vast literature that shows a link between red meat and heart disease as well as several cancers.
What are the biggest changes from the previous guidelines, and what do you think of those changes?
The biggest changes are: 1) Higher recommendation for protein intake from 0.8 grams/kilogram to 1.2-1.6 grams/kilogram; 2) The heavy emphasis on meat products and full fat dairy; and 3) changes in recommendations on added sugar, and elimination of the specific recommendations on reducing alcohol intake.
[The new guidelines say “limit alcoholic beverages; a change from previous guidance that suggested U.S. adults ages 21 and over limit consumption to two drinks or fewer per day for men and one drink or less per day for women.]
Tell us about the changes in guidelines on sugar for children.
One of my biggest concerns about “no recommendation for added sugar for children under 10 years old,” is that it is already being interpreted as restricting added sugar intake to zero for children under age 10.
In addition to it not being at all realistic, it can have several unintended consequences, including sugar shaming and over-eating sugar when kids are able, leading to over-eating in general. Kids learning a pattern of restricted eating followed by over-eating can lead to a variety of distorted eating behaviors (e.g., stress eating, emotional eating) and eating disorders (e.g., binge eating disorder).
