Food is at the front and central in the Make America Remement Remement, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s campaign to solve chronic diseases in the United States. That is why the upcoming federal guidelines for food can attract extra attention this time, even if a massive reorganization of the health work of the nation unfolds.
The nutritional guidelines for Americans come out every five years, jointly framed in their final form by federal health and agricultural authorities. The following set is due by December, one year after an external committee of academic experts has assessed scientific evidence and submitted an advisory report.
But on Thursday, Kennedy shot a chance on the report of the advisory committee, traditionally the basis of influential government recommendations.
“We are in the middle of now, very, very energetic, revising the food guidelines,” said Kennedy Thursday, according to one TV News Pool Report. “There is a document of 453 pages that looks like it was written by the food processing industry. And we are going to come up with a document that is simple, that people with great clarity let us know what kind of foods their children need to eat, what kind of food they can eat.”
After the first meeting of the Maha committee On 11 March it was already an open question about how closely the guidelines of 2025-2030 will crochet the recommendations of the scientific advisers. Their report was framed in terms of equity, a principle that the Trump government was attacked as unacceptable ideological.
“We will be sure that the guidelines of 2025-2030 are based on sound science, not on political sciences,” said agricultural secretary Brooke Rollins in a statement released after the closed door of the Maha committee. “Beyond are the days when left -wing ideologies guide public policy.”
And in the same release: “We will ensure that the food guidelines will reflect the public interest and serve public health, rather than special interests,” Kennedy said. “This is a huge step to make America the healthiest country in the world.”
The Scientific report of the Advisory Committee of the Nutrition Guidelines 2025 Was the first to apply a “health lens” to the assessment of scientific literature in an attempt to ensure that all people have access to healthy food. “Equity” is one of the conditions marked by the Trump government in actions that have been felt throughout the country.
The cycle for new guidelines overlaps four -year presidential conditions. When an administration of the White House ended and another began in January, advice was given in December before the guidelines became official and after public comments were collected for 60 days. USDA and HHS will now have until December 31 to release the version that covers 2025 to 2030.
This is the stage in which the new recommendations behind the curtain go after almost two years of public meetings about the available research. Although never an exact copy of the advisory reportGuidelines that come forward can look considerably different.
And they matter. The final guidelines are more than just advice to a nation that experiences both obesity and poor food. Each iteration sets standards for 16 national food aid programs, and influences 1 in 4 Americans Because of what children eat during their school lunches and what families can buy through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the special additional nutrition program for women, babies and children (WIC) and the nutrition programs for older Americans.
Stat asked experts who were involved in the guideline process over the years what they think. USDA did not respond to Stat’s request for comment. HHS Public Affairs Specialist Joellen LEVELLE STAT referred to the press release from USDA and HHS; A request for an interview with a member of the Maha committee has not drawn any response. Leaders of the advisory committee did not answer e -mails who asked for their thoughts.
Barbara Schneeman, a University of California, Davis, professor of Nutrition Emerita who worked on the guidelines of 2020-2025, said that the end product advice of the Expert Committee generally reflected, with two remarkable abnormalities. While the analysis of the committee of added sugars limited intake to 6% of the total energy, the guidelines ultimately said less than 10% of energy intake. Moderate drinking remained on two drinks a day for men, not one drink or less, as the committee concluded, but there was “the emphasis on reducing alcohol intake,” she said.
Dariush Mozaffarian, director of the Food is Medicine Institute at Tufts, has viewed the process over the years, from scientists about data and systematic assessments to the final food pyramids that evolve from USDA and HHS decision -making formers.
“They usually do not listen to the report when there is a conflict between less food or avoiding something that is harmful that the American food sector can harm, so there is an inherent conflict of interest,” he said.
Mozaffarian also noticed how the guidelines of 2020-2025 had taken fewer strict positions than the academic recommendations for drinking and added sugar. Another committee had recommended to consider climate issues, but the light did not see, he remembered.
“The first phase is completely transparent,” said Mozaffarian. “Then that goes in a completely opaque black box of the agencies that come up with the last food guidelines without any public disclosure of what the discussions were, why they made the decision, why they listened to or did not listen to a certain decision.”
USDA, HHS and the Advisory Committee have been criticized for combining potential conflicts of interest in one list for all 20 members instead of by individual disclosure. The schedule of 2025-2030 includes pharmaceutical companies Abbott, Boehringer Ingelheim, Lilly, Novo Nordisk and Pfizer as well as outside meat, the vegetable maker of meat substitute, dairy management and both the American Egg Board and Egg Nutrition.
The sharpest gap can be the gap between the mission of the advisory committee to concentrate on fairness and the imperative of the White House to expel lexicon and financing diversity, fairness and inclusion of the government.
“We believe that emphasizing health expenditure in our report can inform the development of the nutritional guidelines for Americans, 2025-2030, that will support us in achieving their nutritional goals,” says the report.
One committee member, Fatima Cody Stanford, said she did not see equity as a political issue.
“If you think about this idea of fairness, we are just to ensure that all Americans have access to healthy food at all times,” said Stanford, a doctor and scientist from Obesity in Massachusetts General Hospital, to Stat. “We don’t care how much money there is in your bank account. We don’t care in which family you are born. We believe that access to a healthy diet is a human right.”
Her own family inspired that principle.
“If someone whose parents have been supervising a food pantry for more than 30 years, I can tell you that if you have no access to healthy food, you can’t eat healthy,” she said. “You don’t prevent chronic diseases.”
Equity is just one of the administrative words in the report of 421 pages, which also analyzed how the needs of people from different cultures could meet.
“A part of that problem with customized cultural nutrition interventions is knowing that I have to adjust these interventions to fit the person for me,” she said about treating her patients for obesity. “Why not do that to guarantee the best health results in terms of food for the person for me or for my dietitians, if that will collect the best health results with the help of the best food for that person?”
Stanford pushed back on every suggestion that the work of the committee was ideological and not based on science, and said that the group looked at more than 6,000 pages with reports for more than 22 months, assessed more than 2,000 new references and analyzed millions of data points.
“When we drew our conclusions, we had to use the literature, not just our own personal beliefs and thoughts and feelings and emotions,” she said.
With regard to scientific evidence, Mozaffarian has the data and systematic assessments that are delivered to the committee because they have been drawn up by USDA and HHS. In an editorial Published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition in JanuaryHe blamed the exclusion of ultra-processed foods of the report on a poor evaluation, concluding the committee that the evidence was too weak.
He hopes that the definitive guidelines remove what he calls a ‘long -term fear of dairy fat’, an opinion that is still being discussed, but one that can join Kennedy’s, based on a visit to a lead in Alexandria, VA. Posted on X, “We encourage programs to switch from low-fat dairy products-for which the outdated food guidelines require that they promote full fat/full milk.”
Experts wonder whether the final guidelines will contain something about seed oil.
“That would be unprecedented for them to actually get something out of a hat from a hat that was not even in the scope of this,” said Mozaffarian. “I am discouraged by the focus of the secretary on seed oil, which are a pretty healthy product.”
Mozaffarian is more concerned about the lack of financing of the National Institutes of Health for Nutrition Research, which is needed to strengthen future guidelines.
“NIH spends around 4% of his budget on food research and training, and according to the most optimistic estimates that look at a subsidy or project that mentions food,” he said, adding that his research has not been reduced. “I hope my audience disagrees with seed oil will not lead to a cut.”
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