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The 2025-2030 Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA), released on January 7 by the Departments of Health and Human Services (HHS) and Agriculture (USDA), immediately provoked deep concern among nutrition experts and public health groups, including our organization, the Center for Science in the Public Interest. Among the key issues raised were conflicts of interest, internal contradictions, and the negative climate and budget impacts of the new, meat-heavy food pyramid.
Our chief concern: Many of the recommendations in the new DGA sound good at face value, but aren’t actually supported by science. We need a coherent resource, grounded in science, guiding the nutrition policies that affect tens of millions of Americans through federal food assistance programs, including the National School Lunch and breakfast programs, the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), and the Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP).
That’s why we are advocating that all Americans follow an evidence-based set of recommendations built on decades of scientific research: the Uncompromised Dietary Guidelines.
The Typical, Rigorous Dietary Guidelines Process
The DGA are legally mandated by the National Nutrition Monitoring and Related Research Act of 1990 (NNMRRA) to reflect the “preponderance of the scientific and medical knowledge current at the time.” Their creation requires an exacting evidence review, process transparency, and a willingness to follow the data—even when it conflicts with intuition or ideology. Checks and balances are established to ensure that decisions are not governed by personal preferences or biases.
Many of the recommendations in the new DGA sound good at face value, but aren’t actually supported by science.
One such mechanism is an independent body called the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee (DGAC), comprised of 20 nationally recognized nutrition and health experts representing a range of research specialties. These experts receive research questions to review from HHS and USDA (“the Departments”) and produce a report using a transparent, methodologically rigorous process aligned with the scientific method. They refine the list of questions, systematically review the evidence, analyze data, and make conclusions based on what the data showed. This review is carried out over two years, with multiple public meetings and opportunities for public comment.
Upon concluding its work, the DGAC submits a scientific report to both HHS and USDA, which then write the final guidelines.
What Happened This Time
After receiving the 2025 DGAC report in December 2024, HHS and USDA initially indicated they would release the DGA by the end of summer 2025, but instead quietly commissioned a new “Scientific Foundation” panel in August 2025. This panel, in just a few months, conducted a new set of reviews to inform the DGA, ultimately presenting conclusions that aligned with the administration’s (and conveniently, industry’s) preferred outcomes.
The resulting report rejected more than half of the 2025 DGAC’s evidence-based recommendations (compared to just two major divergences in the 2020 process) due to unfounded claims of bias based on the incorporation of a health equity lens in the DGAC’s process.
The 2025 DGAC used a health-equity lens to create more inclusive and applicable dietary guidance for all Americans; it allowed the committee to understand the influences of people’s food “environments, financial circumstances, and cultural backgrounds on diet and health relationships.” In its place, the new Scientific Foundation promised dietary guidance “free from ideological bias, institutional conflicts, or predetermined conclusions.”
The administration did not deliver on any of these promises. Seven of the nine authors of the Scientific Foundation report had clear conflicts of interest related to the beef, pork, dairy, and supplement industries.
For example, the two authors of the scientific foundation’s review on protein collectively have financial relationships with the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, the National Pork Board, and the National Dairy Council, and one of them founded a protein supplement company; unsurprisingly, the review found that Americans should be eating more protein, including red meat.
And, unlike the DGAC, the administration reversed the scientific process by starting with a predetermined conclusion. In their own words: “This edition is organized around a simple principle: minimally processed, naturally nutrient-dense foods are the reference point for dietary guidance.”
This is unsurprising, given HHS Secretary Kennedy’s obsession with all things “natural.” In other words, the agencies decided that all minimally processed foods were inherently healthy and then selected evidence to support their beliefs—disregarding decades of strong evidence showing that many of these foods (e.g., steak, beef tallow) increase our risk of disease.
Pitfalls of the New Guidelines
The result is a mixed bag; there is, after all, often a morsel of truth in misinformation. For example, many nutrient-dense, minimally processed foods are beneficial for health. Decades of nutrition advice from past Guidelines have also said to eat whole grains, fruits, and vegetables, and limit saturated fat—guidance that was maintained in the new DGA.
Some new additions—such as limiting “highly processed” foods and eliminating added sugars—sound sensible but are difficult for most people to follow. To make healthier choices more possible, we need systemic changes to agricultural subsidies and policies that support healthier retail options, restrictions on marketing of unhealthy foods and beverages, and increased funding for school kitchen infrastructure.
The new Guidelines also include several unscientific and potentially harmful changes. These include increasing recommended protein servings (especially from animal sources); promoting red meat, full-fat dairy, butter, and other sources of saturated fat instead of sources of polyunsaturated fats such as vegetable oils, despite strong evidence that this is associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease; and removing key details about vegetable subgroups and specific alcohol limits.
Implementation Challenges
One of the main issues with applying the new DGA will be its contradictions, like the recommendation to maintain the saturated fat limit at 10 percent of daily calories while promoting food choices and serving suggestions that could easily lead someone to eat double or triple that amount.
Also, there is a looming question of how the new DGA recommendations will be incorporated into current programs, since many are still in the process of implementing recommendations from the 2020 DGA. For example, USDA’s current added-sugar updates for school meals, which were based on findings in the 2020 DGA and will not be fully implemented until 2027, are now in conflict with the 2025 DGA’s stricter added-sugar recommendations.
To make healthier choices more possible, we need systemic changes to agricultural subsidies and policies that support healthier retail options, restrictions on marketing of unhealthy foods and beverages, and increased funding for school kitchen infrastructure.
Perhaps the most important contradiction, however, is not within the DGA, but between the actions of the administration and their expressed guidance to “eat real food.”
Fresh, real food is often expensive and preparing it requires skills, time, and resources. For institutional food-service providers, scratch cooking relies on kitchen infrastructure, culinary training, and funds that the administration has not prioritized.
If the administration is serious about improving access to real food, it would support the Plant Powered School Meals Pilot Act, which would provide voluntary grants for schools to incorporate more plant-based food options, while covering costs for training, menu development, and kitchen equipment.
On a consumer level, following the new recommendations for doubling protein intake, emphasizing animal proteins, and choosing higher-fat dairy would likely increase consumer spending and impact family budgets (beans and lentils would be a cheaper way to increase protein, but prioritizing plant-based proteins was one of the many rejected DGAC recommendations).
Even when carefully selecting the cheapest foods that still meet the daily serving requirements of the new DGA, one food economist and dietitian found that daily food costs were at least $5 (not the $3 a day touted by USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins) and didn’t provide sufficient calories.
Furthermore, whole foods that are nutritious and cheap (like dry beans or raw poultry) often take more time to prepare, which can be a stumbling block for busy working parents. Prioritizing whole foods and home cooking sounds like a great choice, but is not within reach for many families when grocery prices are high and the administration’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act has made the largest cuts in history to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
By disregarding the scientific process in favor of pushing Kennedy’s personal beliefs and industry interests, the 2025–2030 DGA undermine the scientific integrity of federal nutrition policy. They steer Americans toward dietary patterns that are liable to increase, rather than reduce, chronic disease.
A Better Alternative: The Uncompromised DGA
CSPI followed the DGA update process closely, contributing to the public nomination process for DGAC members, commenting on the publicly posted research protocols and scientific questions, following all seven public meetings of the DGAC where preliminary results were shared, and participating in the public comment period for the final DGAC Scientific Report.
As speculation grew that the administration would largely reject the DGAC report, we asked ourselves: What would the DGA look like if they actually followed the science? The Uncompromised Dietary Guidelines for Americans is our answer.
The Uncompromised DGA updates the 2020 DGA with the 2025 DGAC’s recommendations. It is endorsed by over 20 organizations, including the National Association of Nutrition & Aging Services Programs (which runs programs for older adults, like Meals on Wheels) and the National WIC Association, and 17 past DGAC members.
It also includes a supplemental guideline, authored by CSPI and the Center for Biological Diversity, that acknowledges the connection between climate change and our food system.
The purpose of releasing the document was to create a coherent set of overarching guidelines for healthy dietary patterns, offering a reliable, science-backed, thoroughly vetted resource for policymakers, health professionals, advocates, and the public. In contrast to the 2025 DGA, the Uncompromised DGA outlines the following key directives:
- Integrate transparent, rigorous science: The Uncompromised DGA synthesizes the 2025 DGAC’s science-based recommendations and directly updates the 2020 DGA, reducing ambiguity for program implementers.
- Prioritize plant-based proteins for health: Increase beans, peas, lentils, nuts, seeds, and soy, and reduce red and processed meats within calorie and nutrient limits.
- Consistently limit sodium and saturated fat: Limit sodium to <2,300 mg and saturated fat to <10 percent of daily calories, and limit foods high in these overconsumed nutrients.
- Contain clear vegetable and protein subgroups: Follow the Eat Healthy Your Way dietary pattern, which lists servings for specific vegetables (like dark green and starchy) and proteins (like beans, peas, lentils and seafood) so program implementers can ensure consumers meet nutrient needs.
Where the official 2025–2030 DGA trade clarity and consistency for ambiguous visuals and contradictory messages, the Uncompromised DGA provides policymakers, consumers, and program implementers with a clear, science-based benchmark to evaluate—and challenge—where the administration’s DGA depart from the evidence.
A Clear Choice for a Healthy Diet That Can Actually Be Used
Contradictory guidance corresponding to conflicts of interest in the 2025-2030 DGA poses a serious implementation challenge for everyone affected by the guidelines: federal agencies, nutrition professionals tasked with aligning meal standards and educational materials with the DGA, the 1 in 4 people in the U.S. who rely on federal nutrition assistance programs, dietitians and doctors providing nutrition advice, and, ultimately, everyone in the country.
The choice is clear: The new DGA are difficult, confusing, and expensive to implement. The Uncompromised DGA are clear, science-aligned, and implementable. Join us in prioritizing evidence over ideology.
The post Op-Ed: The Government Wants You to Follow Their Food Pyramid. We Have a Better Alternative. appeared first on Civil Eats.
