Carbohydrates, saturated fats, seed oils, essential nutrients and ultra-processed foods could all be the subject of reforms to U.S. Dietary Guidelines next year.
A new set of Dietary Guidelines must be produced by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and Human Health Services (HHS) every five years at least, according to a law from 1990.
That means the next set of guidelines is due to be written in 2025, under Donald Trump's second term as president and with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as health secretary.
These new guidelines will aim inform dietary advice given by policymakers, nutritionists and health professionals; implemented by American schools, businesses and food programs; and followed by American families, until 2030.
Nina Teicholz, founder and former director of the Nutrition Coalition, hopes they will be overhauled. Teicholz has promoted changing the Dietary Guidelines for the past decade, working with policymakers and stakeholders in the previous Trump administration to do so.
She told Newsweek she had been in discussions with the Make America Healthy Again movement and the Trump team about working on the 2025 guidelines at the USDA.
By law, the guidelines must be informed by the latest science—the current guidelines credit a committee of "20 distinguished scientists" for its information—but it is ultimately written by the USDA and HHS.
Teicholz said that she agreed with the recommendations laid out by the Nutrition Coalition, which criticize the guidelines' focus on carbohydrates.
Specifically, Americans are encouraged to eat up to six servings of carbohydrates—bread, cereal, rice, pasta—per day and get up to 10 percent of daily energy from sugar, which the Nutrition Coalition says promotes diseases such as type 2 diabetes and obesity.
Teicholz added: "I believe [the Trump administration] would support evidence-based reforms, which should include removing the caps on saturated fats."
Current Dietary Guidelines recommend that saturated fats—fats that are solid at room temperature, such as in butter, cheese, lard, tallow and meat—should be limited to less that 10 percent of calories per day, from the age of 2.
Some nutrition experts believe that eating too much saturated fat is linked to raised levels of cholesterol in the blood, and in turn heart disease—but others disagree, blaming inflammation for heart disease risk.
"There are more than 23 systematic reviews and meta-analyses on these fats that have, on the whole, concluded that these fats have no effect on cardiovascular or total mortality and little-to-no effect on heart disease," said Teicholz.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has spoken out about saturated fat; his Make America Healthy Again campaign featured a slogan that promoted frying food with tallow fat instead of vegetable oils, and he has previously called seed oils "one of the most unhealthy ingredients that we have in foods."
However, current Dietary Guidelines recommend consuming vegetable oils as one of the core elements of a healthy dietary pattern.
Teicholz said she also hoped future guidelines would better address daily micronutrient needs.
"Currently, the guidelines, even if followed perfectly, are deficient in vitamin D, vitamin E, choline and folate," said Teicholz. "The guidelines should provide all essential nutrients, preferably from whole, natural foods."
Kennedy may wish to add specific guidance about ultra-processed food: packaged edible products manufactured using industrial processes and chemical additives such as food colorings, emulsifiers, preservatives and so on.
Kennedy has been a loud critic of food containing these additives—and similar warnings against ultra-processed food appear in the guidelines of other nations, such as Brazil, Belgium and Israel.
Project 2025 suggested that it wanted the Dietary Guidelines to be either reformed or eliminated entirely, in line with a stripped-back version of the USDA.
"There is no shortage of private sector dietary advice for the public, and nutrition and dietary choices are best left to individuals to address their personal needs," said page 309 of its mandate.
Professor Shonil Bhagwat, of the Open University's Environment and Development department, U.K., previously told Newsweek that, under Project 2025, U.S. dietary guidelines would "go out of the window, which means there will be no reliable yardstick to measure what food is healthy and nutritious, and what is not."
Teicholz said: "I believe that if we can bring increased rigor to the guidelines and make evidence-backed changes, we have a good change to finally reverse the epidemics of chronic disease in America."
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