Content created by Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs (ASPA)
Restoring Science and Common Sense
Every American deserves to be healthy - but too many Americans are sick and don’t know why. That is because their government has been unwilling to tell them the truth. For decades, the U.S. government has recommended and incentivized low quality, highly processed foods and drug interventions instead of prevention.
Under the leadership of President Trump, the government is now going to tell Americans the truth. Today, the White House released the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2025–2030, the most significant reset of federal nutrition policy in decades. Under President Trump’s leadership common sense, scientific integrity, and accountability have been restored to federal food and health policy. For decades, the Dietary Guidelines favored corporate interests over common sense, science-driven advice to improve the health of Americans. That ends today. The new dietary guidelines call for prioritizing high-quality protein, healthy fats, fruits, vegetables and whole grains – and avoiding highly processed foods and refined carbohydrates.
Implementation of the Dietary Guidelines
The Dietary Guidelines are the foundation to dozens of federal feeding programs, and today marks the first step in making sure school meals, military and veteran meals, and other child and adult nutrition programs promote affordable, whole, healthy, nutrient-dense foods.
Evangelizing Real Food
The Dietary Guidelines are a whole food framework intended to be customized to individuals and families, and their needs, preferences, and financial status. The guidance provides possibilities across all recommendations. For example, in proteins, options such as chicken, pork, beans, and legumes; a larger variety of dairy products, at all price points, including whole milk and full-fat dairy products; fresh, frozen, dried, and canned fruits and vegetables, from beets to strawberries, carrots to apples; and whole grains. Paired with a reduction in highly processed foods laden with refined carbohydrates, added sugars, excess sodium, unhealthy fats, and chemical additives, this approach can change the health trajectory of America. Specific guidance include:
- Prioritizing Protein: While previous Dietary Guidelines have demonized protein in favor of carbohydrates, these guidelines reflect gold standard science by prioritizing high-quality, nutrient-dense protein foods in every meal. This includes a variety of animal sources, including eggs, poultry, seafood, and red meat, in addition to plant-sourced protein foods such as beans, peas, lentils, legumes, nuts, seeds, and soy.
- Avoiding highly processed foods: For the first time, the Dietary Guidelines call out the dangers of certain highly processed foods – a common-sense and vital public health point. The guidance calls to “avoid highly processed packaged, prepared, ready-to-eat, or other foods that are salty or sweet” and “avoid sugar-sweetened beverages, such as soda, fruit drinks, and energy drinks.”
- Avoiding added sugars: While previous Dietary Guidelines did not take a hard line against added sugar (especially for children), this guidance says, “no amount of added sugars or non-nutritive sweeteners is recommended or considered part of a healthy or nutritious diet” and calls on parents to completely avoid added sugar for children aged four and under.
- Ending the War on Healthy Fats: The guidance calls for receiving the bulk of fat from whole food sources, such as meats, poultry, eggs, omega 3–rich seafood, nuts, seeds, full-fat dairy, olives, and avocados. When cooking with or adding fats to meals, the guidelines call for using the most nutrient-dense natural options with essential fatty acids, such as olive oil.
- Heralding whole grains and avoiding refined carbohydrates: This guidance takes a firm stand to “prioritize fiber-rich whole grains” and “significantly reduce the consumption of highly processed, refined carbohydrates, such as white bread, ready-to-eat or packaged breakfast options, flour tortillas, and crackers.”
- Including diets lower in carbohydrates to manage chronic disease: The guidance makes the science-based and common-sense recommendation that individuals with certain chronic diseases may experience improved health outcomes when following a lower carbohydrate diet.
Reducing Health Care Costs
The most expensive thing we can do as a country is continue government incentives for food that sickens Americans and drives up health care costs. For instance, 42 million Americans depend on SNAP for nutrition – but some of the most popular items on the program are sugary drinks, candy, and chips. Because 78% of SNAP recipients are on Medicaid, these incentives for unhealthy food also drives up health care costs. This public policy insanity must end. If followed, this new guidance will dramatically lower chronic disease – and health care costs – for Americans:
- According to a recent analysis by Johns Hopkins, 48% of all federal tax dollars are spent on health care – and 90% of U.S. health care spending is on people with chronic diseases. Many of these conditions are preventable, often reversible, and often tied to the food we eat.
- The United States faces the highest obesity and Type 2 Diabetes rates (OECD) in the developed world.
- The United States spend 2.5 times more per capita than the average of developed countries (OECD) on health care – and our life expectancy is 4 years lower. Chronic conditions tied to food are major contributors to this.
- The US childhood obesity rate is nearly five times higher than some other developed countries like France.
- In the United States, one-third of teens suffer from pre-diabetes, 20% of children and adolescents have obesity, and 18.5% of young adults have nonalcoholic fatty liver disease.
- 77% of military-aged youth aren’t eligible to join the military – primarily due to chronic diseases tied to food.
- A recent study of Medicare beneficiaries found that a 15% weight loss reduction resulted in nearly $1,000 per year in lower Medicare spending.
Prioritizing Health Outcomes, Not “Health Equity”
- While the Biden administration said health equity was the “central prism” of their nutrition review, President Trump instructed the U.S. to make the health of all Americans the primary goal.
- The purpose of our Dietary Guidelines is to make recommendations on optimal nutrition to educate Americans and impact federal procurement programs. When DEI impacts nutrition science, it enables special interests to argue the status quo is acceptable because it would violate “health equity” principles to encourage Americans to eat healthier food.
- We reject this logic: a common-sense, science-driven document is essential to begin a conversation about how our culture and food procurement programs must change to enable Americans to access affordable, healthy, real food. The Trump administration welcomes all stakeholders to be part of this conversation in the coming year.
See the full Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2025-2030 at realfood.gov.