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FEB 11, 2026

New dietary guidelines were released in January by the USDA and Department of Health and Human Services titled Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2025–2030. In this post I’m going to illustrate the clear deficiencies of the new guidelines by comparing them to two older versions of Dietary Guidelines for Americans. I will begin the description of each guideline with the visual diagram used to summarize the guideline.

Dietary Guidelines for Americans 1995. These guidelines introduced the image of the food pyramid. The pyramid suggests daily servings for each of the food groups. Serving size is defined in the full text of the guidelines. The most servings are at the base of thy pyramid (bread cereal rice and pasta group) and the least number of servings at the third level of the pyramid, which include dairy and proteins. Note that the very top of the pyramid, which includes fats, oils and sweets, does not include serving sizes but just advises to use sparingly. 

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The full version of the guidelines is 40 pages long and includes the names of a 12 member expert advisory committee. This committee included many famous experts in nutrition, especially Marion Nestle.

Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2020-2025

By 2020 a lot more information was available about foods that increased or decreased the risk of chronic diseases such as diabetes, heart disease and stroke. The image was changed from a food pyramid to an image of a healthy eating plate. The generic image did not include serving sizes except suggesting no more that 1-2 servings a day for dairy products. 

The guidelines included a My Plate Plan calculator that makes calorie recommendations and serving sizes based on age, gender, height, weight and average activity level. Try out the calculator using the above My Plate Plan link. It’s fun to see how many calories you should eat and how they should be distributed.

Note the proportions of food groups on the Healthy Plate image. Vegetables (not including potatoes and french fries) and fruits make up half of the daily calories. Whole grains and protein make up the other half at roughly 1/4 each. Healthy protein emphasizes fish, poultry, beans and nuts with advice to limit red meat and cheese.

That does not mean you should eat no red meat at all, it just should not be your main source of protein. An excellent guide to limited healthy meat and poultry eating is a book by Matthew Evans titled On Eating Meat: The truth about its production and the ethics of eating it.

The guidelines also recommend eliminating processed meats like bacon and cold cuts. Limited quantities of healthy oils (both olive oil and vegetable oils) were recommended for salad and for cooking. It recommended avoiding trans fats

The full text of the 2020-2025 guidelines is 140 pages long. As with the previous guideline it lists the names of a 20 member advisory committee. It also includes a detailed description of how the guidelines were developed. Here is a particularly relevant quote from that description:

“The Guidelines must be grounded in the body of scientific and medical knowledge available at that time, not in individual studies or individual expert opinion.”

2025-2030 Dietary Guidelines for Americans

The new image for the 2025-2030 is an upside down version of the 1995 food pyramid. Things you should eat the most of are at the top and things to eat the least of are at the bottom. This image says nothing about actual quantities of the foods recommended. It has red meat (including an image of a steak), cheese and poultry at the top and whole grains at the bottom. This is the complete reverse of the 1995 pyramid, which had whole grains at the base of the pyramid with meat and poultry and dairy limited at the top. It is also almost the reverse of the 2020 Healthy Eating Plate. The 2025-2030 inverted pyramid does at least have vegetables at the top, but fruits are somewhere in the middle. 

The full version of the new guidelines consists of only nine pages. there is no listing of an advisory committee or any scientific reviewers. The only authors listed are Robert F. Kennedy Jr (Secretary of HHS) and Brooke Rollins (Secretary of Agriculture).

The 2025-2030 guidelines have a little good advice (eat mostly unprocessed foods and avoid added sugar ), and a great deal of very questionable advice. See below

Fats

The 2026 guidelines advise eating (or drinking) full fat dairy (all saturated fat), They advise that healthy fats include beef tallow and the fat in red meat (all saturated fats). Here is a quote from the 2025-2030 guidelines:

“Healthy fats are plentiful in many whole foods, 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, prioritize oils with essential fatty acids, such as olive oil. Other options can include butter or beef tallow.”

Note that meats, poultry and eggs are listed before nuts, seeds olives and avocados and full fat dairy is mentioned in the middle of those much healthier polyunsaturated fats.

Another interesting quote from the 2025-2030 guidelines: 

“More high-quality research is needed to determine which types of dietary fats best support long-term health.” 

This is absolutely not true. There is plenty of research showing polyunsaturated oils and fats lower the risk of cardiovascular disease. I suspect this statement is a veiled reference to Kennedy’s completely unsubstantiated idea that seed oils, which are polyunsaturated oils are bad for you. Seed oils are polyunsaturated oils and have been shown to lower the risk of cardiovascular disease. Even polyunsaturated fats should account for no more than 20-35% of daily calories.

The 2025-2030 guidelines do say that saturated fats should be limited to no more than 10% of total daily calories. This is the same as recommended in the 20020-2025 guidelines. It is not clear how you would do that by eating full fat dairy, using beef tallow for cooking, and eating red meat for protein. We know that eating too much saturated fat increases the risk of heart disease and stroke. The American Heart Association recommends limiting unsaturated fat to only 5-6% of total daily calories.

Protein

The 2026 guidelines suggest protein intake of 1.2 to 1.6 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight. This is the amount of protein recommended for very active people (i.e. long distance runners and weight lifters. People who are more sedentary need only 0.8 grams of protein per kilogram and moderately active people only need about 1 to 1.5 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight.

The average American eats about 20% more than the recommended amount of protein (see this link from BBC Science Focus). Not only do we eat more protein than we need, two thirds of that protein comes from animals (Department of Agriculture Food Surveys Research Group).

Alcohol

Previous versions of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans have recommended a maximum of 1 drink a day for women and 2 drinks a day for men. A change to 1 drink per day for both men and women was proposed for the 2020-2025 guidelines, but any change in this recommendation was actively opposed by the alcohol industry so the advice remained unchanged. 

The best current science shows that there is no totally safe level of alcohol intake. Alcohol at any level increases the risk of cancers of the GI tract, high blood pressure, cardiomyopathy, sleep disturbance, and dementia. The more alcohol consumed, the bigger the risk. Another problem is that “drink” means different things to different people 

The UK national health service uses a measure called a “unit” of alcohol. A unit is 10 ml (about 1/3 oz) of pure alcohol. That is the amount that most people can metabolize in 1 hour. The NHS recommendation is that no more than 14 units per week is a low (not zero) risk level of alcohol consumption. Here is a chart showing what 14 units of alcohol is in common alcoholic drinks:

A shot of spirits is 25 ml (.8 oz) of 80 proof alcohol, which is equal to 1 unit. 

The 2025-2030 guidelines recommendations just say “Consume less alcohol for better overall health.” This guidance is not very helpful.

Bottom Line

The 2025-2030 Dietary Guidelines for Americans are poorly researched and contain much advice that is contrary to current nutritional science. I strongly recommend that you ignore them. The 2020-2025 Dietary Guidelines for Americans remain the most comprehensive and well researched nutritional advice and I would advise that everyone continue to use them.

Alcohol intake recommendations are not current in either guideline. Although there is no absolutely safe level of alcohol intake, the UK NHS alcohol guidelines using units of alcohol as the measure make the most sense.