New Dietary Guidelines undercut science and sow confusion

The Center for Science in the Public Interest appreciates that the 2025–2030 Dietary Guidelines for Americans released today by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and Department of Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins maintains the longstanding limits on saturated fat and sodium, and emphasizes fruits, vegetables, whole foods, and water consumption. These elements reflect important, evidence-based public health priorities.  

However, amid this positive advice is harmful guidance to emphasize animal protein, butter, and full-fat dairy, guidance that undermines both the saturated fat limit and the 2025 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee’s science-based advice to emphasize plant-based proteins to reduce cardiovascular disease risk. While the meat and dairy industries may be excited about the new food pyramid, the American public should not be; the guidance on protein and fats in this DGA is, at best, confusing, and, at worst, harmful to the one in four Americans who are directly impacted by the DGA through federal nutrition programs. In addition to contradictory guidance, the document spreads blatant misinformation that “healthy fats” include butter and beef tallow.

This level of contradiction is unacceptable given the Secretaries had clear, transparent, evidence-based recommendations at their disposal: the 2025 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee (DGAC) Report, finalized in December 2024. However, the Secretaries dismissed this two-year scientific review led by 20 independent nutrition experts, in collaboration with federal scientists, and informed by thousands of public comments and seven public meetings, all because it incorporated health equity and, they allege, “ideological bias, institutional conflicts, or predetermined conclusions.”  

In an unprecedented move, the Secretaries sought out a separate group of nutrition scientists, many with ties to the meat and dairy industries, evading public and transparent processes, to create a new “scientific” report that props up the meat and dairy industries at the expense of human and environmental health and undermines established processes for setting recommended daily allowances for nutrients, like protein, in service of Secretary Kennedy’s predetermined beliefs. Overall, the new DGA completely rejects more than half of the DGAC’s recommendations, as outlined by the Departments’ own scientific justification document, released today.  

To fill the gap in clear, science-backed advice this administration has created, CSPI and the Center for Biological Diversity have created the Uncompromised DGA — a resource that illustrates what the federal dietary guidance should have looked like if the agencies had adhered to their mandate to publish an evidence-based DGA reflecting the reviews of the 2025 DGAC. Much like many states are continuing to follow CDC’s longstanding, science-based pediatric vaccination schedule, policymakers, advocates, health professionals, and consumers can use the Uncompromised DGA to guide public health policy and individual decisions.  

The five nutrition guidelines included in the Uncompromised DGA have been endorsed by more than 20 organizations in the health, nutrition, environment, education, and food system fields, including the National Education Association, National WIC Association, and the Society for Nutrition Education and Behavior. They are also endorsed by 13 individual members of previous Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committees, including seven members of the 2025 advisory committee.

CSPI remains committed to defending the role of science in public policy and ensuring that nutrition guidance serves the public interest — not special interests.