On Jan. 7, 2026, the Trump administration released updated guidance with the 2025-2030 U.S. Dietary Guidelines for Americans, signaling a shift in national nutrition recommendations. These guidelines encourage Americans to avoid highly processed foods and added sugars and instead opt for more whole-food choices. Updated every five years by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Department of Health and Human Services, the dietary guidelines are used by federal agencies, policymakers and healthcare practitioners to help inform the public about dietary choices.
The updated guidance was issued by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins under the “Make America Healthy Again” initiative. It includes recommendations for incorporating fresh fruits and vegetables, grains and dairy into daily diets and emphasizes limiting highly processed and high sugar foods. While most of the advice remains consistent with previous dietary guidelines, the update emphasizes using traditional fats to cook, eating more protein and reducing carbohydrates. This shift contrasts past suggestions to avoid these types of fats, lower protein intake and focus on carbohydrates.
“But top nutrition experts question the protein push, saying Americans already consume more protein than they need, and there’s no new evidence that people need to drastically ramp up consumption,” PBS News reported. “For many people, eating much more protein could lead to more fat and more cases of diabetes, they say.”
Federal nutrition services like the National School Lunch Program and Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) follow the recommendations given in these guidelines. This could mean changes to food and nutrition requirements in the future. For students, this may result in school lunches with less sugar and highly processed food,potentially replacing items such as sugary cereal bars and cinnamon rolls.
With the worsening health crisis of America, over half of the population have a chronic disease that is diet-related.
“90% of U.S. healthcare spending goes to treating chronic disease—much of which is linked to diet and lifestyle,” the new official website for the 2025-2030 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, says. “These guidelines serve as tools for Americans to use to curb the risk of diet-linked disease.
Previous editions of the dietary guidelines were written as policy documents. By contrast, this shorter and more accessible version with a new food pyramid visual and accompanying digital website seems to be consumer-friendly.
“Because the new guidelines are brief, it seems like they would be easier to use by the public,” Adjunct Professor of Nutrition Teresa Fung said. “However, there are areas that are really quite vague. For people who need more specific guidance, the new DGAs may be difficult to use.”