Secretaries Brooke Rollins and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., claim they want to “make Americans healthy again.” Yet, instead of leveraging one of the strongest tools available to improve public health—the Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA)—they’re undermining it with misinformation.  

This administration is spreading health misinformation

The DGA are science-based recommendations developed every five years by the U.S. Departments of Agriculture (USDA) and Health and Human Services (HHS), informed by a panel of independent experts who conduct a rigorous review of the latest nutrition evidence. The Guidelines shape not just population dietary advice, but also federal nutrition programs that serve one in four Americans. They have the potential to significantly improve public health—if leaders follow the data, not disinformation. 

As the next edition of the DGA is in development, the MAHA (Make America Healthy Again) movement and the Secretaries have circulated misleading claims, suggesting that previous guidelines were shaped by “leftist ideologies” and “special interests.” A recent opinion piece by Nina Teicholz and Ty Beal is one example: Among other blatant misinformation about the 2025 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee’s (DGAC) methods, the authors falsely suggest that the DGAC promotes refined grains, when in fact their report clearly recommends “mostly whole grains and lower refined grains.” A previous Teicholz op-ed blamed the DGA for our chronic disease epidemic and then went on to promote saturated fat, which is clearly linked to chronic disease. Such rhetoric erodes trust in the scientific consensus needed to promote healthier diets.  

Barriers to adherence—not the Guidelines themselves—are the problem

Let’s be clear: As serious as the chronic disease epidemic is, the DGA cannot be the cause of this crisis when most Americans don’t follow the Guidelines. A 2024 systematic review found that greater adherence to the DGA—as measured by the Healthy Eating Index (HEI)—is linked to lower mortality risk. Yet, the average HEI score for Americans is only 58 out of 100, indicating poor adherence. Rather than blaming the DGA, the Secretaries should turn their attention to addressing the barriers that prevent Americans from eating a DGA-recommended diet.

The latest numbers show that more than 36 million Americans live in poverty, and 13.5 percent of households experience food insecurity. While wages remain stagnant, food prices are rising (an issue certainly not relieved by this administration’s tariffs). Amidst this backdrop, this administration has proposed cuts to nutrition assistance and ended farm-to-school programs that help low-income Americans access the local, whole, healthy foods the Secretaries supposedly support.  

The Dietary Guidelines are our best tool for improving nutrition

The DGA’s guidance—to eat diets higher in vegetables, fruits, legumes, nuts, whole grains, and seafood, and lower in red and processed meats, sugar-sweetened foods and beverages, refined grains, and saturated fat—is not the problem. In fact, federal nutrition programs that are required to align their offerings with the DGA provide evidence of their positive impact. School meals are a great example: The 2015 DGA recommended limiting added sugars to less than 10 percent of calories daily, yet the 2020 DGAC found that 70-80 percent of children still exceeded this limit. As a result, the USDA introduced specific added sugars limits for school meals. These changes, fully in effect by 2027, build on the fact that school meals already have the highest nutritional quality compared to other food sources for children due to their alignment with the DGA.  

The DGA process, both rigorous and transparent, is also not the problem. The DGAC includes a diverse group of independent experts, publicly nominated and vetted by USDA and HHS. Their multi-year review of scientific literature is based on publicly posted protocols, comments from multiple public meetings and the open comment period, and an external peer-review process. No individual member or industry determines the outcome of the DGAC’s report. Ironically, the least transparent phase is the one we’re currently in: when USDA and HHS staff draft the final guidelines based on the DGAC report. The Secretaries themselves could improve by committing to transparency and evidence-based recommendations.  

The DGA have remained generally consistent in their key recommendations since 1980, including advice to limit saturated fat. Far from outdated, the science linking saturated fat to cardiovascular disease has only strengthened. Led purely by their analysis of this evidence base and not by political agenda, the 2025 DGAC supported a dietary pattern lower in red meat consumption and higher in plant-based foods, which contain less saturated fat and more health-promoting nutrients like fiber and folate than animal proteins. Replacing foods high in saturated fat—like red meat and butter—with whole grains, legumes, vegetables, and unsaturated fats is an evidence-based way to reduce cardiovascular disease risk.  

CSPI supports the DGA

The Secretaries have pledged that the DGA will be “based on sound science, not political science.” If that’s true, then the 2025 DGAC’s report, released in December, should be their guiding document. The Committee’s recommendations reflect the most rigorous and transparent scientific consensus available. If the MAHA movement and the Secretaries are serious about improving nutrition and public health, the path forward is clear: The Dietary Guidelines are not the enemy—they’re one of our strongest allies. Let’s use them.