When Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was sworn in as health secretary last year, he pledged to improve Americans’ well-being. Now, he and others in his Make America Healthy Again orbit are trying to deliver on that promise by rewriting the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, the government’s official guidance on what to eat and drink for good health.
The guidelines, updated every five years, haven’t changed much in substance since they were first published in 1980.
But Mr. Kennedy has suggested that the new version — expected in the coming days — will be radically different, with revised recommendations on meat, dairy and saturated fats, concerning some nutrition researchers.
What are the dietary guidelines?
The guidelines are a public health tool, meant to translate scientific evidence on diet and health into actionable advice.
They tell us how many fruits and vegetables to consume every day, whether to cook with vegetable oils or butter, what to eat to get enough protein and more. There’s also guidance for people in various life stages, such as how much caffeine is safe for pregnant women, when babies should start eating solid food and what supplements older adults may need.
Every five years, officials from the Agriculture and Health and Human Services departments revise the guidelines to reflect the latest nutrition science. They are typically published in a long, dense document that is written for professionals including policymakers, federal food program officials and health care providers such as doctors, nurses and dietitians.
Previous editions have consistently included recommendations to consume plenty of fruits, vegetables and whole grains and to prioritize lower-fat dairy products and lean sources of protein; they also have included recommendations for limiting the consumption of alcohol, added sugars, sodium and saturated fats.
Why are the guidelines important?
The average person probably doesn’t think about the dietary guidelines, said Marion Nestle, a professor emerita of nutrition, food studies and public health at New York University. But they affect millions of people every day.
They help determine what’s on the menus at day cares, schools and military cafeterias. They influence the foods offered in programs that provide free meals or groceries, such as to older adults with mobility issues (Meals on Wheels) or low income women and children (WIC).
They also shape the nutrition curricula in schools and community centers, and the advice doctors and other health care providers dispense.
How is the process different this time?
A few years before the guidelines are updated, federal officials typically appoint a group of nutrition scientists from academic and research institutions to review the scientific evidence on what to eat for good health. That committee compiles a summary of its recommendations for federal officials to use to write the new guidelines.
The process this time around started out in a typical way — a scientific committee conducted its review in 2023 and 2024 and issued a report in December 2024. But Mr. Kennedy criticized the report several months after it was submitted, saying it was too long and claiming, without evidence, that it was influenced by the food industry and therefore compromised.
To have a health secretary publicly attack the scientific committee’s work is “totally unprecedented,” said Kevin Klatt, an assistant professor of nutritional sciences at the University of Toronto.
Mr. Kennedy is overseeing the update to the guidelines, but it’s not clear whether qualified experts are advising him, or how they are evaluating scientific evidence, said Dr. Walter Willett, a professor of epidemiology and nutrition at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
Unless there’s greater transparency, Dr. Willett added, he will view the new guidelines with skepticism.
What are experts watching for?
Nutrition experts said they would be scrutinizing the recommendations on red meat, dairy, saturated fats, ultraprocessed foods and alcohol because they believe these areas may deviate from previous editions.
In recent months, Mr. Kennedy and Brooke Rollins, the agriculture secretary, have suggested that the new guidelines would recommend consuming more red meat — in particular, beef.
Mr. Kennedy has also said that the new guidelines might encourage the consumption of saturated fats, a type of fat found not only in red and processed meats like beef, bacon and hot dogs, but also in dairy products and certain cooking fats like butter, coconut oil and beef tallow. He has said the guidelines would “elevate” full-fat dairy products like whole milk and cheese, which are high in saturated fats.
Experts will also be looking for whether the guidelines recommend limiting or even avoiding ultraprocessed foods, which have been linked to health issues like obesity, Type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease and certain types of gastrointestinal conditions and cancers.
And they will be watching for what the guidelines say about alcohol, given recent evidence that no amount of drinking is safe for health. Alcohol consumption is a leading cause of chronic disease in the United States, said Katherine M. Keyes, a professor of epidemiology at Columbia University. Drinking less would improve people’s health, she said.
Food and beverage industry groups will likely watch for any updates to the guidelines that may affect their sales.
Would those changes make us healthier?
Some changes would be welcome, experts say, and some would not.
Eating more red meat would not improve Americans’ health, Dr. Nestle said. Researchers have found that people who eat too much red and processed meat have greater risks of developing conditions like cardiovascular disease, Type 2 diabetes and colorectal cancer. The scientific committee had advised that the new guidelines recommend substituting red and processed meats with more plant sources of protein like beans, peas and lentils.
People in the United States are already eating enough red meat, said Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, a cardiologist and the director of the Food Is Medicine Institute at Tufts University. While occasional consumption is fine, he added, red meat should not be given an “undeserved health halo.”
There is also no evidence that consuming more saturated fat would benefit health, Dr. Klatt said. In fact, consuming too much could raise the risk of developing high cholesterol and cardiovascular disease.
Many experts would support changes that recommend eating fewer ultraprocessed foods. But Dr. Willett said that the guidelines should emphasize limiting the most harmful ultraprocessed foods — such as sugary drinks, processed meats and those made mainly with refined grains — and make clear that some ultraprocessed foods, like whole grain breads and cereals, can be healthful choices.
Federal officials have not spoken publicly about what the guidelines might say about alcohol. Since 1990, the guidelines have recommended that men have no more than two drinks per day and women no more than one. But Dr. Keyes said that even these amounts of alcohol are associated with health risks and that the guidelines should encourage people to reduce their consumption even more.
What’s most important, Dr. Willett said, is that the guidelines follow scientific consensus. If they contradict recommendations from experts and health organizations, it could not only worsen peoples’ health but “cause massive confusion,” he said. People wouldn’t know who to trust, let alone what to eat and drink, he added.
“It really helps to have everybody rowing in the right way, based on the best possible evidence,” Dr. Willett said.
Alice Callahan is a Times reporter covering nutrition and health. She has a Ph.D. in nutrition from the University of California, Davis.
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