Every five years since 1980, the U.S. government has issued guidelines on what Americans should eat for optimal health. This is not unusual — more than 90 countries across the world do the same, as well as the World Health Organization.
But the 2025-2030 guidelines, expected this fall but now set for release in December, are creating an unusual amount of buzz. That’s because of the influence of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose pronouncements about health and nutrition are unconventional — as well as his own diet, which is heavy on meat and sauerkraut.
“We’re about to release dietary guidelines that are going to change the food culture in this country,” Kennedy said earlier this month.
What those changes are, for now, remain the subject of speculation. A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services would only tell the Deseret News that Kennedy is committed to guidelines that will be “rooted in rigorous science” and that “The 2025–2030 Dietary Guidelines for Americans will be a big part of the Trump Administration’s commitment to make America healthy again."
But there have been clues dropping all year.
Kennedy said in the spring that the new guidelines would be dramatically downsized — going from hundreds of pages to just four or five. Bloomberg has reported that the food pyramid, a visual representation of what foods should comprise the bulk of our diet, could return; it was replaced in 2011 with a graphic called MyPlate. Some expect the advice regarding alcohol consumption to change. And it’s widely thought that the new guidelines will emphasize fruits and vegetables, meat and dairy products over carbohydrates, which in the past have been a central part of government’s message.
Kennedy often says that “Food is medicine‚" meaning that what we eat dramatically affects how our bodies function. This shouldn’t be controversial; the phrase “Let food be thy medicine” is widely attributed to Hippocrates.
But other things Kennedy has said are, and so the release of the new guidelines will likely result in a food fight. Here’s what to expect — and what a MAHA-endorsed Thanksgiving feast might look like.
Science, but whose science?
As anyone who spends time on social media well knows, there’s a study to support the health benefits of practically anything we consume, often funded by a group that produces that particular food or drink. And the influence of lobbyists on the U.S. dietary guidelines has been a source of controversy throughout their history. One 2022 study found that nearly 70% of “public comments” submitted as the current guidelines were being developed came from people associated with the food industry.
And so Kennedy’s promise that the guidelines will be rooted in rigorous science begs the question, “Whose science?”
Nutritionist Marion Nestle, who acts as a watchdog on industry-funded studies and is the author of “What to Eat Now,” among other books, said that the science involving nutrition hasn’t changed radically over the years. (Which is one reason that food writer Michael Pollan, in his book “In Defense of Food,” wrote “Who wants to hear, yet again, that you should ‘eat more fruits and vegetables’?”)
“The guidelines, since 1980, have always said eat more fruits, vegetables, and whole grains; balance calories; reduce intake of sugar, salt, saturated fat (a euphemism for meat), and alcohol,” Nestle told the Deseret News in an email. “Only the details have changed. The basic principles stayed the same throughout, because the science has not changed significantly, and still has not.”
A review of the guidelines going back to 1980 shows that all recommend eating a variety of foods and consume sugar, sodium and alcohol in moderation.
What has changed since 1980 is the influence of social media, where people testify to the life-altering effects of diets ranging from all-meat to all-plants. And those advocating carnivore or low-carb eating are hoping for validation in the new guidelines.
It is Kennedy’s advocacy of saturated fats and increased protein, however, that is causing the most alarm among health officials. While recommended servings of different food groups have changed over time, the guidelines through their history have cautioned against heavy consumption of saturated fats. About a decade ago, however, studies began to emerge suggesting that some saturated fats may not be as bad for us as previously believed, and that it was sugar and carbs that were doing the most harm to Americans’ health.
Ronald Krauss, a professor of pediatrics and medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, told The Guardian that despite the change in thinking on saturated fats, if Kennedy “is actually going to go out and say we should be eating more saturated fat, I think that’s really the wrong message.”
Christopher Gardner, who served on a committee that helped to draft the existing guidelines, was more stark, in a conversation with STAT. “Cardiovascular disease starts early,” he said. “Those plaques build early in your arteries, and they only manifest decades later when you have a heart attack.”
And while Nestle noted, “Everything is completely guessing at this point,” she added in an email, “The few clues point to an emphasis on whole foods (which sounds good), along with an emphasis on the benefits of meat (not so good) and saturated fat (uh oh). Will they say anything about ultra-processed foods? Who knows?”
The new dietary guidelines and alcohol
There has been speculation that forthcoming guidelines will not take a tougher stand on alcohol, despite an accumulating body of research that shows no amount of alcohol is safe and despite Kennedy’s own history of addiction. (He has said that he still attends AA meetings.) Also, President Donald Trump has said that he has never had an alcoholic beverage and discouraged his children from drinking.
The dietary guidelines have long said that Americans should not have more than one to two drinks a day, but Reuters reported earlier this year that the advised limits may be dropped.
“Some alcohol executives had feared a move towards tighter recommendations on alcohol intake as authorities such as the World Health Organization upped their warnings about alcohol’s health risks,” Reuters reported.
It’s unclear whether the report would advise no alcohol use at all, or just suggest moderation.
Former U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy said earlier this year that alcohol consumption increases the risk of at least seven types of cancer, and he called for warning labels on such products.
The confirmation hearing for Trump’s pick for surgeon general, Dr. Casey Means, was delayed because she went into labor on the day it was scheduled, but she is MAHA-aligned and has previously written about quitting alcohol temporarily and said she might stop drinking for life.
A ‘bottom-up approach’
Americans associated with the Trump-adjacent Make America Healthy Again movement, or MAHA, are enthusiastic about the potential for wholesale change in the government recommendations, which influence what meals are offered on military bases and in public schools. Like Kennedy, they see proper nutrition as a way of reversing and preventing chronic illness and disease.
“Most kids don’t know what it feels like to feel good. And most adults don’t know what it feels like to feel good,” Hilary Boynton, founder of the nonprofit School of Lunch, which advocates for healthier food in schools, said at an online MAHA forum this week.
Boynton, a mother of five, isn’t part of the MAHA movement herself but shares the MAHA hope that Kennedy will make impactful changes, including changing the guidelines to allow more fat, protein and sodium (for flavor), and to encourage people to eat fewer carbohydrates that are nutritionally empty.
She remembers when low fat was the health craze and speaks of feeling “liberated” when she realized how satiating even a small amount of fat is. “I thought fat was going to make fat, and that’s not the case. There’s a lot of unwinding to do,” she said in an interview. She said that she hopes people can set aside any misgivings about MAHA related to politics and join the efforts to improve America’s food supply “for our children.”
“We need a healthy next generation,” she said.
In addition to changing her own family’s diet, Boynton took over food operations at a local private school and replaced its offerings with locally sourced and nutrition-rich meals. Nationwide, she envisions a trickle-down effect that can start in public schools if their offerings are radically changed. (As recently as 2024, those offerings included Lunchables, the packaged meals produced by Kraft Heinz that came under fire after an analysis by Consumer Reports.)
“It’s this beautiful bottom-up approach where these kids are taking this information back into their homes and talking to their parents about their school lunch and saying, ‘Mom, Dad, can you make bone broth and fermented foods and sourdough bread like Miss Hillary and the school chefs?’” she said at the MAHA forum Nov. 19.
Fermented foods are, according to a recent article in The Wall Street Journal, “having a moment” even though they’ve been dated to 8000 BC. Fermented products like sourdough bread and kombucha are believed to improve gut health and reduce inflammation. Kennedy’s wife, Cheryl Hines, recently said that her husband eats steak and sauerkraut for breakfast and carries his own jar of sauerkraut to restaurants to supplement his meal.
He’s also a fan of beef tallow and whole milk, things that conventional nutritionists have shunned for decades, but are now making a comeback, in part because of Kennedy’s advocacy.
Earlier this year, Kennedy said in a statement directed at ranchers, “Under President Trump, we are restoring whole foods as the foundation of the American diet and ending the decades-old stigma against natural saturated fat in beef and dairy products. We will strengthen America’s ranching industry so families can choose nutrient-dense, minimally processed foods.”
Dairy farmers apparently have nothing to fear either. Nestle noted that in a news conference earlier this year that announced the end of artificial coloring in ice cream, Kennedy said, “We are going to be there for the dairy industry … our agencies are about to release more dietary guidelines in the next several months that will elevate those products to where they ought to be … There’s a tremendous amount of emerging science that talks about the need for more protein in our diet, and more fats in our diet, and there’s no industry that does that better than this industry.”
The sauerkraut notwithstanding, Kennedy also said that his favorite food is ice cream.
A MAHA Thanksgiving
Despite the alarm that Kennedy has raised in the medical and science community over his statements about vaccines, his ousting of government scientists and his support for saturated fats, he has won praise for some initiatives, such as his efforts to get artificial coloring (some of which was already banned in other countries) out of the American food supply.
This could be a problem for anyone whose Thanksgiving traditions include Froot Loops, but most of the traditional Thanksgiving foods are MAHA friendly, so long they’re prepared from whole foods and don’t come in a box.
Mashed potatoes? Real potatoes, butter and whole milk, all RFKJ-approved.
Green beans? Check. Sweet potatoes or yams? Yes, just go light on the sugar and skip the marshmallows.
Turkey? Last year, Kennedy shared a video of him deep-frying a turkey in beef tallow. (Commentators suggested that people not try this at home, especially with bare feet.)
Even cornbread stuffing can be MAHA when made from scratch using cornmeal and butter, not a mix.
And while Kennedy has called sugar “poison” and said ideally, we should not eat sugar at all, he has been known to indulge in McDonald’s, so the rare pumpkin or apple pie shouldn’t be a problem when the crust is made with lard — which, like butter and beef tallow, he says has been unfairly maligned.
The real MAHA Thanksgiving, however, would be what historians believe the pilgrims and Native Americans actually ate in 1621: wild turkey and other fowl (possibly including passenger pigeons), venison, cod and bass, and corn and squash. There were likely no potatoes to be had, according to Smithsonian magazine, and definitely no cranberry sauce.