The Trump administration’s highly anticipated federal dietary recommendations are likely to reverse decades of nutrition recommendations that have long been the status quo on saturated fats, carbohydrates, and ultra-processed foods.
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins have made this year’s Dietary Guidelines for Americans, a policy document that governs all federal food programs, the core of their Make America Healthy Again agenda.
Senior administration officials confirmed for the Washington Examiner that the dietary guidelines were initially supposed to be released this fall but have been delayed due to the government shutdown.
Supporters of MAHA have pinned their hopes on the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, or the DGAs, as a critical component of lowering rates of obesity, Type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular disease, all of which are linked to diet.
HHS and USDA are statutorily required to update the DGAs every five years based on new research. The DGAs determine the nutritional standards for critical food access programs such as food stamps, the school lunch program, and diets provided to military servicemembers.
Kennedy has been highly critical of the prior iterations of the DGA, blaming corporate influence in developing guidelines for their long-standing recommendations on saturated fats and carbohydrate intake.
The recommendations are likely to involve increasing saturated fat intake and limiting carbs, but they will also likely define ultra-processed foods, which the guidelines previously did not prioritize.
Here is what to look for when the guidelines are announced later this year.
Boost for saturated fats
Dietitians and nutrition experts have warned against saturated fats for decades due to their connection with increased cholesterol levels, but Kennedy has been a staunch advocate of increasing the amount of saturated fats that Americans consume.
Saturated fats are solid at room temperature and are primarily found in animal products, including meat and dairy.
Kennedy, an adherent to a personalized version of a carnivore diet and a drinker of unpasteurized milk, has said that new dietary guidelines should “stress the need to eat saturated fats of dairy, of good meat, of fresh meat and vegetables.”
The dietary guidelines have set a cap on military rations and school lunches to have a maximum of 10% of total calories from saturated fats. The American Heart Association recommends even less, advising only up to 6% of total calories, or about 120 calories, from saturated fats per day.
Nina Teicholz, author of the book The Big Fat Surprise and advocate of increasing saturated fat intake, said at a Heritage Foundation event in September that lifting the recommendation cap on saturated fats would be “the most important policy change” in the new guidelines.
“That is the rate limiting factor in people eating enough meat and dairy to be healthy, so that’s the most important thing that I think could happen,” Teicholz said.
Recent research from the University of Minnesota has found that more chemically complex saturated fatty acids found in nuts and dairy products have similar properties to Omega-3 fatty acids in that they contribute to decreased rates of cognitive decline.
Further research from the University of Queensland in Australia last year found that saturated fatty acids are essential for processes in the brain related to memory formation and could play a significant role in preventing neurodegenerative diseases, like Alzheimer’s.
A low-carb caveat
MAHA advocates have argued that consuming more saturated fats and animal-based protein should take the place of the high-carbohydrate diet, blaming an overreliance on carbs as the source of a multitude of chronic diseases.
Benjamin Bikman, professor at Brigham Young University, spoke at the same Heritage Foundation event as Teicholz, explaining in great detail the chemical breakdown of carbohydrates into glucose and fructose.
Bikman argued that higher-carb diets contribute to higher rates of insulin, the hormone responsible for blood sugar control. Insulin irregularity, Bikman said, is the leading cause of metabolic diseases, like obesity and Type 2 diabetes.
MAHA supporters highlight as evidence the correlation between the rise of metabolic diseases and the 1992 Food Pyramid, a visual representation of that year’s dietary guidelines, and its 2011 successor, MyPlate, which emphasized starches and grains instead of meat and eggs.
Some research has found that lower-carbohydrate diets balanced with higher saturated fat intake improve insulin resistance without adverse cholesterol effects, but the idea is hotly debated.
David Ludwig, a Harvard endocrinologist who also participated in the Heritage panel, said “not all carbohydrates are going to be public enemy No. 1,” but cross-culturally, healthy societies with high-carb diets tend to be much more physically active than Americans.
“The problem is that most of the American population is not metabolically healthy. We’re sedentary, stressed, we don’t get enough sleep. That creates this bedrock of metabolic dysfunction. We’re overweight. We have obesity. On top of that, the carbohydrates are a real problem,” said Ludwig.
Defining and limiting ultra-processed foods
The DGAs will also likely include stark warnings about ultra-processed foods, a long-term target of MAHA acolytes.
Kennedy, Rollins, and Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary announced in July a joint department effort for developing a standardized definition of ultra-processed foods. The FDA and the National Institutes of Health have also been increasing resources for research projects on the link between diet-related disease and ultra-processed foods.
Julia Wolfson, professor in the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, told reporters earlier this month that ultra-processed foods are best defined as those “involving industrial processing techniques and ingredients” that cannot be replicated in home kitchens that are used to “make foods hyper-palatable and irresistible.”
The FDA estimates that more than 70% of the American diet consists of packaged foods that are often considered ultra-processed, and that children get over 60% of their calories from such foods, including packaged snacks, sweetened beverages, and ready-to-eat meals.
Wolfson said that ultra-processed foods are linked to obesity, Type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular disease, but she also said that some ultra-processed foods, such as whole wheat breads or soy-based dairy alternatives, are not dense in nutrients of concern or artificial ingredients.
She told the Washington Examiner that she hopes the DGAs don’t end up “treating all ultra-processed foods with the same broad brush.”
“I think striking a balance between identifying ultra-processed foods that are of most concern, that also on a nutrient basis, we would encourage people to limit, while also being realistic about the ways that we all rely on many of these products, and some of them are not so bad,” Wolfson said.
