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In summary
* Dietary goals for Americans were first published in 1977. The Dietary Guidelines for Americans were first published in 1980 and are revised every five years. The two key guidelines that have most impacted American food policy (and public health) for nearly 50 years were to limit total fat to no more than 30%, and saturated fat to no more than 10% of calorie intake. These restrictions were set because it was thought that fat caused heart disease (in middle aged men). My PhD examined the evidence for those guidelines and the beliefs upon which they were based and found that they should not have been introduced – then or now. Other research teams have found the same.
* The Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGAs) 2025-2030 – the tenth edition – were published on January 7th, 2026. The first sentence was “These Guidelines mark the most significant reset of federal nutrition policy in our nation’s history.” That was not an overstatement.
* The next sentence was “The message is simple: eat real food.” Those few words captured what an entire movement has been saying for years. To a great extent, this was the day that many of us thought we would never see. Reading the short document (10 pages instead of the 164 pages of the 2020 report) was joyful.
* The original food pyramid became “MyPlate” in June 2011. The pyramid has returned and it’s been flipped upside down, as it was in a South Park sketch. Secretary Kennedy tweeted the clip in case you missed the 2014 classic.
* The new guidelines are concise, readable and quite revolutionary, but there’s a big BUT…
* First, the good news and there is a lot of good news in the eight guidelines, three boxes and the “Special populations & considerations”:
– The eight guidelines prioritize high-quality, nutrient-dense protein foods (and protein intake recommendations have been increased.) Animal sources of protein (eggs, poultry, seafood, and red meat) are cited ahead of plant sources (beans, peas, lentils, legumes, nuts, seeds, and soy.) Consume dairy, is another message – and not just dairy but full-fat dairy. The healthy fats section mentions olive oil, butter and beef tallow. The entire 2025 report has no mention of seed oils. Grains are way down the list (and at the bottom of the new upside down pyramid). Serving goals are 2-4 per day – far from the 6-11 servings of beige starches which formed the original pyramid base. “Limit highly processed foods, added sugars, refined carbohydrates and alcohol” rounded up the common sense.
– Breastfeeding is emphasised. The toddler diets (one of which was vegetarian) in the 2020 report are gone.
– Even in the few pages, there was room to introduce an option for low carb diets. Hats off to Dr Nina Teicholz and others who have been presenting the evidence for this for years.
– The document closes with warnings for the nutritional deficiencies that are likely to arise from vegetarian and vegan diets. So much legacy nutritional non-sense has gone.
– By its absence the 30% cap on total fat has gone. However, the saturated fat cap remains: “saturated fat consumption should not exceed 10% of total daily calories.” This is the huge BUT, because all the good news in the guidelines is incompatible with that one preserved guideline.
* IF the 10% saturated fat cap is followed, all the good advice to eat real food (red meat, oily fish, eggs, dairy, olive oil etc) cannot be followed. IF the good advice to eat real food is followed, the 10% saturated fat cap cannot be followed. This note explains why.
* I am as astonished by the committee having missed this glaring inconsistency as I am by all the good things in the report.
Introduction
I have often been asked on podcasts “what should we eat to make people healthy again?” The answer is simple. I summarised it in a post in 2021 (Ref 1). The first two principles should be 1) Eat real food and 2) Choose that food for the nutrients it provides. I am then often asked “what needs to happen to make this our advice?” My reply to this has been more complicated – along the lines of “Ideally, dietary guidelines would change and then a top down cascade would happen. That would be the optimal way. However, that’s not going to happen so we need a bottom up approach whereby individuals ignore the guidelines and eat real nutrient dense food. A third way is happening with health practitioners who have realised the guidelines are harmful. They can then influence their patients and it speeds up the bottom up approach.”
I was wrong. Specifically, I was wrong about the top down approach not happening. It has just happened. The day I, and many others in the real food arena, thought would never happen just happened on January 7th, 2026. The new Dietary Guidelines for Americans for 2025-2030 were published (Ref 2). They are concise, readable and quite revolutionary. There is one exception – a huge exception – and we don’t yet know how the contradiction that the exception brings will play out. But for now, let’s celebrate all that is good about the new Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGAs) 2025-2030.
First – a bit of background…
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Zoe
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