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Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2025-2030

Executive summary

* In December 2024, the Scientific Report for the 2025-2030 Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGAs) was published by the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee. This is the report that goes to the US Departments of Health and Human Services (HHS) and Agriculture (USDA) and, following other input, the 2025-2030 DGAs will be published later this year.

* The 2025-2030 publication will be the tenth edition of the DGAs.

* This note covers the background to the DGAs, when the Committee was formed, what the Scientific Report is and where it fits in the process, what has changed since last time and – ultimately – what is the recommended diet for Americans.

* I posit how the diet for Americans should be determined (which nutrients do human beings need to consume? and ii) which foods provide those nutrients?) and then question why this has not been done in 45 years of DGA committees. I explore competence, conflict, beliefs and what’s at stake to opine what went wrong.

Background to the DGAs

Many thanks to friend and US Dietary Guidelines expert, Dr Nina Teicholz, for her help with this note. Nina’s PhD was awarded by the University of Reading in June 2024 in the field of evidence-based dietary guidelines generally and dietary fat specifically.

Dietary goals for Americans were first set in 1977, following the work of Senator George McGovern’s select committee (Ref 1). The first Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGAs) were issued in 1980 and it is ingrained in US law that these will be published every five years:

By law (Public Law 101-445, Title III, 7 U.S.C. 5301 et seq.), the Dietary Guidelines for Americans is published by the federal government every 5 years. Since the 1985 edition, the U.S. Departments of Health and Human Services (HHS) and Agriculture (USDA) have fulfilled this requirement by establishing a Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee (Committee) of nationally recognized experts in the field of nutrition and health to review the scientific and medical knowledge current at the time” (Ref 2).

The 1977 dietary goals were very prescriptive with amounts recommended to the percent, gram and milligram for carbohydrate, fat, saturated fat, dietary cholesterol, sugar, and salt. This brief document was succeeded by the first Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGAs), which were published in 1980 (Ref 3). This was also a brief document – more like a pamphlet – and it reiterated the same points as the 1977 Dietary Goals document (but without specifications for intakes): Avoid too much fat, saturated fat, cholesterol, sugar, and sodium. Eat foods with adequate starch and fiber. It added some new messages: “eat a variety of foods“; “if you drink alcohol, do so in moderation” and “maintain ideal weight.”

In 2005, the cap on total fat was replaced with the introduction of Acceptable Macronutrient Distribution Ranges (AMDRs). The AMDR for fat was 20-35% and this has not changed since. The AMDR for carbohydrate is 45-65% and for protein 10-35%.

Since 2005, dietary/eating patterns have become increasingly prominent and are now core to the guidelines. The 2000 DGAs mentioned eating pattern(s) (four times), but in the context of the Food Pyramid. The 2005 DGA report mentioned food, dietary and/or eating pattern(s) 20-30 times and this time the DASH diet (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension) was introduced as a recommended eating pattern – in addition to the USDA Food Guide. The DASH Eating Plan was described as “high in vegetables, fruits, low-fat dairy products, whole grains, poultry, fish, beans, and nuts and is low in sweets, sugar-sweetened beverages, and red meats.” Vegetarian and Mediterranean-style dietary patterns have been added since.

The 2015 Scientific Report appeared to drop dietary cholesterol as a nutrient of concern (while continuing to recommend dietary patterns that were ‘lower in cholesterol’) and to end the limit on total fat (while keeping the AMDRs). These points were featured in an article in June 2015 by Mozaffarian and Ludwig called “The 2015 US Dietary Guidelines – Ending the 35% Limit on Total Dietary Fat” (Ref 4).

Mozaffarian’s and Ludwig’s article was somewhat premature since the December 2015 ‘lay’ report (the summary version of the DGAs, which is published for the public), scaled back on both the cholesterol stance and the position on total fat (Ref 5). With reference to dietary cholesterol, the ‘lay’ report said just because the recommendation to limit dietary cholesterol to 300 mg/day is not in the 2015 report, “does not suggest that dietary cholesterol is no longer important to consider when building healthy eating patterns” (p32). The next passage rationalised that foods that are high in dietary cholesterol are high in saturated fat and so should be avoided for that reason.

The new features of the 2020 Scientific Report were i) that the DGAs covered the age group birth to 24 months for the first time and ii) guidance for pregnant and lactating women was included.

The 2025-2030 publication will be the tenth edition of the DGAs.

The DGAs 2025-2030

On January 19th, 2023, the US Departments of Health and Human Services (HHS) and Agriculture (USDA) announced the appointment of 20 nutrition and public health experts to serve on the 2025 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee (the Committee henceforth) (Ref 6).

On December 10th, 2024, the Scientific Report for the 2025-2030 DGAs was published by the Committee (Ref 7). This is the comprehensive document (421 pages in this case), which precedes the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, which are due in 2025. (Nina noted that there are thousands of additional pages of modeling and systematic reviews accompanying the 421 page report). The Scientific Report is sent to the HHS and the USDA. The Scientific Report, public comments and federal agency input, will inform the two departments as they develop the 2025-2030 Dietary Guidelines for Americans.

The methodology used for the 2025 DGAs was the same as for the 2020 DGAs: data analysis; systematic reviews; and “food pattern modeling.” The 2020 Scientific Report was 835 pages long and it contained the word “modeling” 222 times. The 2025 Scientific Report was 421 pages long and it contained the word “modeling” 210 times. The rate of use of the word “modeling” almost doubled in the latest report, therefore.

New topics explored

Having worked together for nearly two years (now disbanded), the Committee hasn’t changed much of what was presented in the 2020 DGAs. This should perhaps not be surprising given that, arguably, the last large, long, randomised controlled trial (RCT) in nutrition was the Women’s Health Initiative and the major paper from this study was published in 2006 (Ref 8).

I say arguably, as Nina and I discussed what would count as a large enough, long enough, RCT while each reviewing the Scientific Report. PREDIMED doesn’t count, as it wasn’t controlled (Ref 9) – the control group diet changed more than either intervention diet – and it turned out not to be properly randomised either (Ref 10). We concurred that long enough should be two or more years; large enough would depend on numbers of people needed to achieve a statistically significant result (which would depend on trial length too), but would be hundreds, if not thousands (PREDIMED involved 7,500 people). We also thought that the trial must evaluate death and disease endpoints, not marker surrogate end points (like blood pressure). Finally, if it wants to make claims for a diet (DASH, Mediterranean diet etc) it needs to study the precise diet it wants to recommend – against a genuine control group.

The Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) study met those criteria, although participants were not generally reflective of the US population. The WHI involved nearly 50,000 post-menopausal women and it concluded that “Over a mean of 8.1 years, a dietary intervention that reduced total fat intake and increased intakes of vegetables, fruits, and grains did not significantly reduce the risk of CHD, stroke, or CVD in postmenopausal women and achieved only modest effects on CVD risk factors, suggesting that more focused diet and lifestyle interventions may be needed to improve risk factors and reduce CVD risk.” i.e., the diet that is recommended by the DGAs didn’t make any difference to the population studied. (Nina shared that no DGA expert committee has ever reviewed the WHI outcome data. I wonder why.)

The new topics addressed by the Committee were:

– food sources of saturated fat consumed and risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD);

– dietary patterns with varying amounts of ultra-proceeded foods;

– strategies for improving diet quality and weight management, which involved new reviews on portion size and frequency of meals and/or snacking; and

– practical guidance about how to feed younger children in terms of caregiver feeding styles and practices that support children’s consumption of healthy foods.

New conclusions/recommendations

Ultimately, the Committee did not propose the addition of an entirely new dietary pattern” (P21). It did, however, make one dietary pattern from the 2020 DGAs prominent. A “Healthy U.S.-Style” dietary pattern was mentioned 70 times in the 2020 DGAs (some of these were references to toddler and/or vegetarian diets). A “Healthy U.S.-Style” dietary pattern (essentially the DASH diet) was abbreviated to HUSS and mentioned 216 times in the 2025 report.

The main recommended modifications to the HUSS (and thus to the 2025-2030 DGAs) were summarised in Table D.10.7 on Page 325 of the Scientific Report. Notice that these guidelines are intended for toddlers and older:

DGA_2025

The five main changes in the Table D.10.7 are:

1) The Committee recommended that Total Vegetables should be kept at the same quantities, but Beans, Peas, and Lentils are recommended to increase, while Starchy Vegetables are recommended to decrease. The summary table above also states “increase Dark-Green Vegetables”, but that is not repeated elsewhere in the document or reflected in the final food intake table (Table D.10.8 below). This needs reconciling in the final report. Table D.10.8 also indicates that these recommendations only apply below a calorie intake of 3,000 a day.

2) Similarly, there are many mentions of reducing Total Grains in the Scientific Report and this is reported in the summary Table D.10.7, but the final recommended diet (Table D.10.8) does not reduce intakes from the 2020 recommended amounts.

3) The Committee recommended reducing Total Protein Foods by reducing Meat, Poultry and Eggs. This is reflected in Table D.10.8 below, but only for calorie intakes above 2,000 a day.

The report explained this decision as follows (P326): “While examining potential reductions in the Protein Foods Group through reduction in the Meats portion of the Meats, Poultry, and Eggs subgroup, it became evident that reductions at or below the 2,000-calorie level had negative implications on meeting nutritional goals, especially for children and adolescents. This underscores the importance of nutrient density and the challenge of meeting nutritional goals within lower calorie levels (2,000 calories or below). Instead, the 2,200-calorie level emerged as a threshold where modifications could be made without introducing numerous nutrient gaps.” Please note the significance of that passage. It’s hilarious. It’s saying, we need Meats, Poultry and Eggs to deliver nutrients in all diets up to 2,200 calories a day. But once these needs are met you can eat less nutrient dense sources of protein i.e., plants.

4) The Committee recommended reducing Dairy and Fortified Soy Alternatives, but the final recommended diet (Table D 10.8) does not reduce intakes from the 2020 recommended amounts.

5) The Committee recommended removal of the line for “Limits on Calories for Other Uses”, which appears in the existing USDA Dietary Patterns for ages 2 years and older. In my opinion, this was a good move. This line was akin to a ‘junk food’ allowance. According to the current (2020-2025) DGAs, these were calories that could be used for added sugars, saturated fat and/or alcohol or to eat more than the recommended amount of food in a food group. (Saturated fat has no place on a list with sugars and alcohol). Given the statistics for overweight and obesity presented in the Scientific Report (and further down in this note), the average American does not need ‘an extra calorie allowance.’

The Committee decided that there was “no scientific justification” to recommend modifications for the quantities of other food groups or subgroups in any pattern.

The recommended diet 2025-2030

The “Healthy U.S.-Style Dietary Pattern (HUSS)” was summarised in Table D.10.8. It was presented as portions per calorie level, to reflect males vs females and infants vs octogenarians. The numbers that are recommended to change are highlighted in orange.

DGA_2025

The equivalent table for the 2020-2025 DGAs was Table D 14.3 (Ref 11):

DGA_2025

I haven’t included all the notes (1 to 6) to Table D 14.3 as these are lengthy – explaining all foods that are in each category. The information we need is in the first column “Healthy U.S.-Style 2,000”, which reports the intakes recommended for a 2,000 calorie-a-day version of the Healthy U.S.-Style dietary pattern. This should be compared with the column for 2,000 calories in Table D.10.8 above. The only difference is that Legumes (in the Vegetables section) increases from 1.5 to 2.5 portions a day, while Starchy Vegetables decreases from 5 to 4 portions a day – keeping Total Vegetables the same.

Grains don’t change. Dairy doesn’t change. Protein Foods don’t change. Meat, Poultry and Eggs, within Protein Foods, don’t change and Oils don’t change. The inconsistencies between general recommendations in Table D.10.7 and specific recommendations in Table D.10.8 need resolving before the final DGAs.

My take on all this

I wondered how to approach this note, as I have reviewed the DGAs several times previously (Ref 12). Nina and Gary Taubes have written Substack articles on the Scientific Report (Ref 13). Nina covered how ultra processed foods were addressed by the Committee, the reductions proposed for Meat, Poultry and Eggs and a thorough review of the trials cited as evidence for heart disease and other conditions (to illustrate how poor the evidence was). Gary covered the how, why and consequences of the fact that the DGAs seem to have gone from pro-vegetable to flat out anti-meat.

I like to approach things systematically and so I thought about what I would want to know – the background to the DGAs, when the Committee was formed, what the Scientific Report is and where it fits in the process, what has changed since last time and – ultimately – what is the recommended diet for Americans.

Having done all that, here are my reflections…

In my 2009 book “The Obesity Epidemic: What caused it? How can we stop it?” I reviewed the upturn in obesity in the final quarter of the 20th Century. There was a striking inflection in the US data in 1980 (see the NHANES chart below). This was the year that the first DGAs were introduced. I argued that for something to change, something must change and one thing that changed – at the time that obesity increased – was the introduction of dietary guidelines. I offered this as an explanation for the obesity epidemic (having rejected the calorie theory argument because populations didn’t eat more and/or do less during this period).

DGA_2025

Figure 1: Overweight and obesity, by age: United States, 1960-2004 (Ref 14).

The December 2024 Scientific Report reported early in the Executive Summary (P13 of the report) that: “prevalence of overweight and obesity is 73 percent among U.S. adults ages 20 years and older and 36 percent among children and adolescents ages 2 through 19 years, and prevalence of prediabetes is 38 percent among individuals ages 12 through 19 years.” Surely that must be an error. Surely 38% prediabetes is for those aged 20 years and older; not teenagers? Whomever they apply to, those numbers are damning.

A couple of pages later in the Executive Summary, the Committee argued that the guidelines are not being followed: “Few U.S. individuals, however, consume a dietary pattern that aligns with Dietary Guidelines recommendations, regardless of age, race, ethnicity, or sociodemographic group examined.” The Committee’s argument is thus – DGAs were introduced and obesity has increased seven fold from just over 10% since then, but that’s because people are not following the guidelines that were introduced. Really? Seriously?

Nina has examined that claim in great detail: by food availability; by calories; by consumption of plants vs animals foods; by consumption of macronutrients; and by intake of saturated fat (Ref 15). She concluded that Americans have largely followed the DGAs, which counters the absurd claim made by the Committee that obesity is the result of guidelines not being followed.

The slide below is my new favourite in presentations that I give. Strictly speaking, the nine food groups are meat, fish, eggs, dairy, vegetables, fruit, legumes, grains and nuts & seeds (Ref 16). I excluded nuts & seeds in the slide, as they make up little of our food intake and because dietary guidelines promote oils (especially vegetable/seed oils) so heavily. I therefore featured oils as a separate line. I put what DGAs tell us to prioritise at the top of the table (vegetables, fruit, grains, legumes and oils) and I put what DGAs tell us to avoid or reduce at the bottom (meat, fish, eggs, whole dairy).

DGA_2025

The column headings summarise essential nutrients – things that we must consume to avoid illness or even death. Please note the words “in the right form”. Hence I don’t recognise Essential Fatty Acids (EFAs) from plant foods, as these can only come in the form of ALA and not EPA or DHA, which is what the body needs. I don’t recognise protein as complete from plant foods. I don’t recognise vitamin A in plant foods because plants can only provide carotene and the body wants retinol (and we cannot assume that everyone can convert carotene to retinol). Similarly, the body wants vitamin D3 and plants cannot provide this in any valuable amount. I was generous ticking minerals for plants other than oils without getting into the absorbability of nutrients such as iron and zinc from plant vs animal sources.

This one slide shows, at a glance, that what we are told to eat does not deliver what we need. What we are told to avoid/reduce does deliver what we need. The DGAs are upside down (just as the first US Pyramid was upside down). If I wrote a Dietary Guidelines document, it could be one page long and include this slide.

It is no secret that the DGAs fail to meet nutritional requirements. I analysed the vegetarian pattern from the 2020-2025 DGAs and found the recommended diet to be deficient in retinol, B3 (niacin), B6, vitamin C (surprisingly), vitamin D, vitamin E and Vitamin K (and that’s before getting into D3 vs D2 or K2 vs K1). The diet was also woefully deficient in iron (and most of the iron came from plant foods and thus was less bioavailable). The diet would not have met omega-3 (DHA/EPA) needs and would have been too high in omega-6 to omega-3 as a ratio (Ref 17).

The 2020 Scientific Report admitted that the guidelines are nutritionally deficient (Ref 18). The Nutrition Coalition (which Nina founded) posted a short but important article citing the following passage from within the 835 page report: “The nutrients for which adequacy goals are not met in almost all [recommended dietary patterns] are potassium, vitamin D, vitamin E, and choline” (Ref 19). Hence, even if Americans meet the dietary guidelines, the creators of those guidelines know that they do not provide what is needed (Ref 20).

What’s going on?

This then begs the question – what’s going on? Successive committees have been formed for 45 years and all of them have failed to publish Dietary Guidelines that focus on nutritional requirements. Committees only need to ask i) which nutrients do human beings need to consume? and ii) which foods provide those nutrients. It really is that simple.

When someone, or a Committee, gets something so obviously wrong, there are typically two reasons for this: incompetence or conflict. Incompetence would apply if the Committee had no knowledge about nutrition, essential nutrients, and the nutrient composition of foods. Reference 6 has the link to the 2025 Committee. The 20 members are described as “nationally recognized nutrition and public health experts.” You can read their credentials on that link. They are professors in nutrition at various US universities. I don’t think that any of them could be described as incompetent in this field.

Turning to conflict, Nina’s article on the December 2024 Scientific Report referenced a report by the non-profit public interest group, U.S. Right to Know showing that 9 out of the 20 members were found to have connections to food, pharmaceutical or weight loss companies or industry groups with a stake in the outcome of the guidelines (Ref 21). There are definitely conflicts and ones that could have influenced Committee members but I don’t think that’s the main issue.

I think that two further factors need to be considered: beliefs and high stakes. I thought about using the word delusions, not beliefs. Delusion is defined as “holding false beliefs despite evidence to the contrary” and that might be more appropriate, but we’ll go with beliefs.

I think that the vast majority of university professors in nutrition believe what they recommend. I think that they believe that red meat is bad and legumes are good. I think that they believe that fat is bad and carbs are good. I don’t know what proportion of university professors genuinely believe nutritional myths and what proportion believe this because they know that their academic career and funding will be over if they stray from this narrative, but belief/delusion is overwhelming in academia. (The test for genuine belief is what do professors feed their children. Are they on a plant-based diet?)

As we saw in the 700th Monday note, universities are agenda funded and genuine research is rare (Ref 22). Vested interests fund academia (fake food companies, pharmaceutical companies, agrichemical companies, ‘philanthropic’ foundations with an agenda etc). Backed by this funding, academia has generated the mass of (largely) epidemiological papers to create and reinforce a nutritional narrative. In Monday notes, we have reviewed hundreds of such papers, which have claimed that the most nutritious foods (as can be established factually with nutrient composition) are harmful and the least nutritious foods (using the same method) are healthful. In this upside down world, it is possible to believe that meat (which contains no glucose) causes type 2 diabetes, while grains (which are literally glucose) don’t.

Dr Malcolm Kendrick tells an anecdote about having shown my cholesterol charts to another doctor who believed that cholesterol causes heart disease (Ref 23). My charts show that the lower the average cholesterol level, the higher the death rate from heart disease and/or all-causes in men and women across 192 countries for which data are available. The doctor exclaimed “oh my goodness, it’s even worse than I thought.” Malcolm explained that the charts were inverse. Deaths were higher when cholesterol was lower. The doctor’s belief/delusion was so strong, he couldn’t see the facts in front of him.

I think that the above table could be shown to nutrition professors – these are the essential nutrients and these are where they are found in the right form – and they would dismiss it. “But red meat causes heart disease/diabetes/cancer”, they would say. “But the best diet has been shown to be plant-based and low-fat.” I think that there is an overriding belief/delusion getting in the way of the correct guidelines being issued. While researching for this note, I came across an article where critique of the DGAs was called “misinformation” (Ref 24). The word “misinformation” appeared 24 times in the article. No references were cited for any examples of that misinformation, but any critique of the guidelines apparently fits the allegation.

I also think that there is a ‘high stakes’ issue. In 2010, I met with a publisher from a global publishing house and we talked about how bad dietary advice is. She shared that another author they worked with “had it on good authority that Diabetes UK knew that the low fat high carb advice was wrong, but who was going to be the first head of the organisation to report that?” Imagine if Diabetes UK did come out and say “oops sorry everyone – we’ve been giving you the opposite advice of what we should have given you for decades. We’re really sorry for everyone who has lost a limb or their eyesight because of this…” There would be lawsuits.

The stakes are even higher in the US, where lawsuits are more prevalent and costly. Imagine if the Scientific Report had said “oops sorry everyone we’ve been giving you the opposite advice of what we should have given you for decades. You are not obese and diabetic because of meat and eggs. You’re obese and diabetic because of sugars, grains and vegetable oils, which we advised you to consume.” (All carbohydrates are sugars, after all).

I wish this note had a more positive message, but it’s honest rather than optimistic. I have no hopes that the Dietary Guidelines for Americans (which the rest of the world follows) will be amended. I applaud Robert F. Kennedy’s goal to “Make America Healthy Again.” I hope that he tackles the corruption in the many US health agencies and the revolving doors where some regulators approve products and then become senior executives at the manufacturer soon afterwards. Not least because RFK’s appointment is probably too late for the 2025 DGAs and not least because we would need 11 Ninas for the 2030 DGAs, I see no way of changing the guidelines. I pray that I’m wrong.

References

Ref 1: Carter J.P. Eating in America; Dietary Goals for the United States; Report of the Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs US Senate. Cambridge, MA, USA: MIT Press 1977.
Ref 2: 2025 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee. 2024. Scientific Report of the 2025 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee: Advisory Report to the Secretary of Health and Human Services and Secretary of Agriculture. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. https://doi.org/10.52570/DGAC2025
(P25 of the PDF – each chapter restarts at p1, so ignore the page numbers on the document bottom right hand side and go by the PDF page numbers at the top.)
Ref 3: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Agriculture U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and U.S. Department of Agriculture. Dietary Guidelines for Americans. Washington: U.S. Government printing office, 1980.
Ref 4: Dariush Mozaffarian and David S. Ludwig. The 2015 US Dietary Guidelines – Ending the 35% Limit on Total Dietary Fat. JAMA June 2015.
Ref 5: Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee. Dietary Guidelines for Americans. Eighth edition. In: Agriculture. USDA, ed., 2015
Ref 6: https://www.dietaryguidelines.gov/2025-advisory-committee
Ref 7: https://tinyurl.com/3ffwaxf5
Ref 8: Howard et al. Low-fat dietary pattern and risk of cardiovascular disease: the Women’s Health Initiative Randomized Controlled Dietary Modification Trial. JAMA. 2006.
Ref 9: https://www.zoeharcombe.com/2017/09/predimed-the-mediterranean-diet/
Ref 10: Estruch et al. Retraction and Republication: Primary Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease with a Mediterranean Diet. N Engl J Med 2013;368:1279-90. NEMJ. June 2018.https://www.nejm.org/doi/10.1056/NEJMc1806491
Ref 11: (Page 21) https://www.dietaryguidelines.gov/sites/default/files/2020-07/PartD_Ch14_Patterns2%2B_first-print.pdf
Ref 12: https://www.zoeharcombe.com/2016/01/dietary-guidelines-for-americans-2015/
https://www.zoeharcombe.com/2020/07/dietary-guidelines-for-americans-2020/
https://www.zoeharcombe.com/2021/01/dietary-guidelines-for-americans-2020-2025/
https://www.zoeharcombe.com/2021/10/towards-better-dietary-guidelines/
Ref 13: https://unsettledscience.substack.com/p/in-the-us-dietary-guidelines-we-cannot?
https://uncertaintyprinciples.substack.com/p/as-obesity-rates-skyrocket-dietary
Ref 14: Centres for disease control and prevention, National Centre for Health Statistics, United States, (2006), Figure 13, Data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES).
Ref 15: https://www.nutritioncoalition.us/americans-follow-the-guidelines-but-their-health-has-not-improved-1
Ref 16: https://www.zoeharcombe.com/2015/05/food-groups/
Ref 17: https://www.zoeharcombe.com/2021/05/a-healthy-vegetarian-diet/
Ref 18: Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee. Dietary Guidelines for Americans. Scientific Report of the 2020 Advisory Committee. In: (HHS) DoHaHS, ed., 2020.
Ref 19: https://www.nutritioncoalition.us/the-guidelines-recommend-diets-that-are-nutritionally-insufficient
Ref 20: https://www.zoeharcombe.com/2022/07/what-do-americans-eat/
Ref 21: https://usrtk.org/wp-content/uploads/dietary-guidelines-advisory-committee-conflicts-2023.pdf
Ref 22: https://www.zoeharcombe.com/2024/09/what-ive-learned-after-700-monday-notes/
Ref 23: https://www.zoeharcombe.com/2021/06/cholesterol-mortality-world-graphs/
Ref 24: de Jesus et al. Addressing misinformation about the Dietary Guidelines for Americans. AJCN. May 2024. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0002916524002806

5 thoughts on “Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2025-2030

  • When they don’t like the results, they ignore/bury it, like with the Minnesota Coronary Experiment.

  • Who is supposed to believe that the Dietary Guidelines reflect anything but vested interests? Why do they bother with all the science bit?

  • Plus ça change….
    I didn’t expect t anything different, for the reasons you have outlined.
    Perhaps we need an amnesty for all these national guidelines and their fat-headed ideas (pun intended) otherwise nothing will ever change.

  • I’m so excited that this American version of Pantomime is being staged yet again. And with a new character, HUSSy!

    When the researchers all look under the table to find the optimal diet, we can all shout, “It’s behind you!”

    I confess to some disappointment that under their fancy dress, every actor in the sketch is a placid herbivorous cow, but that’s what modern audiences seem to expect. CO2 and all of that.

    I think you went easy on them, Dr. Harcombe, regarding the Women’s Health Initiative; you simply cited their own conclusion that there were no positive results. Professor Noakes demonstrates some harm in that study.

    • Hi Darren
      Ha ha!
      And yes I was being kind on the WHI – but – as Nina shared- they ignore it anyway!
      Best wishes – Zoe

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