Rfk Jr. Says To Eat More Protein, Less Sugar In New Dietary Guidelines

The Trump administration is urging Americans to embrace full-fat dairy products, cook with beef tallow and eat more protein in a new set of directives shaped by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Make America Healthy Again campaign.

The Dietary Guidelines for Americans released Wednesday mesh MAHA-influenced changes with longer-standing advice for people to cut sugar consumption while eating more whole grains and colorful vegetables and avoiding “highly processed” foods.

The federal nutrition recommendations, which are updated every five years, give Kennedy a high-profile opportunity to make his mark on how Americans eat. While the guidelines aren’t broadly followed by consumers, they shape federal food procurement for schools and the military as well as the dietary advice that physicians give their patients.

“We're going to be working very hard to ensure government procurement programs go to whole foods, and we're going to ensure Americans have transparency about what they're eating,” a senior administration official said in an interview ahead of the release.

The new guidance largely makes good on Trump officials’ promises to recommend slashing intake of added sugar, which Kennedy has called “poison” — and increasing consumption of protein and whole foods.

The guidelines recommend “ending the war on healthy fats,” specifically suggesting consumption of “the bulk of fat from whole food sources” such as animal proteins, seeds, avocados and full-fat dairy products.

Officials also urge consuming protein “at every meal” including plant-based protein and red meat, despite recommendations from the government’s scientific advisory committee in 2024 that people cut back on steaks and burgers.

In the previous iteration of the guidelines, written during President Donald Trump’s first term, officials declined to include tougher guidance on sugar and alcohol recommended by the government’s scientific advisory board. Still, that 2020 update maintained the government’s long-held recommendations that people cut back on sugar, salt and saturated fat.

The new document loosely outlines ultra-processed foods as “highly processed packaged, prepared, ready-to-eat” and foods that have added sugars and salt. When asked why the guidelines don’t go further to offer a definition, the senior administration official said, “a four-year-old can determine the difference between a potato and potato chips.”

The government’s nutrition advice added a new recommendation on gut health, noting that "highly processed foods can disrupt" a person’s ability to digest foods well, and focused on lowering rates of chronic disease through dietary changes, which previous guidelines also addressed.

The Food and Drug Administration is working on developing a specific definition for ultra-processed foods, but Kennedy recently shed doubt that it would ever be finalized. Scientists have largely not agreed on how to define ultra-processed foods, which they say has made it hard to design policies that address harms.

The new guidance aligns with earlier versions in suggesting limited alcohol consumption, but it does not offer specifics.

American Medical Association President Bobby Mukkamala applauded the new guidelines and said that the AMA plans to provide more education on nutrition for clinicians. He said the association will also work with Congress on legislation that supports Americans’ eating more nutrient dense-food and increases funding for nutrition research.

“The Guidelines affirm that food is medicine and offer clear direction patients and physicians can use to improve health,” Mukkamala said in a statement Wednesday.

The latest guidelines were jointly written by the departments of Agriculture and Health and Human Services, with HHS leading this year’s revision.

The Biden administration oversaw the scientific review of the latest nutrition literature that typically serves as the foundation for the guidelines, but Kennedy and other critics argued that advisory committee members had conflicts of interest, such as previous work for food companies. In at least some regards, the final guidelines bucked the committee’s recommendations entirely, such its advice that individuals stick to fat free or low-fat dairy products.

Kennedy and Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins have additionally moved to allow states to ban junk food and soda from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which serves more than 40 million low-income people. Trump officials have also pressured food manufacturers and retailers to cut synthetic dyes from the food supply and moved to overhaul a food chemical regulatory pathway at the Food and Drug Administration.