Every five years, the U.S. government releases an updated set of recommendations on healthy eating. This document, called the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, has served as the cornerstone of nutrition policy for almost half a century.

On Jan. 7, 2026, the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Agriculture released the 2025-2030 edition of the guidelines. The updated guidelines recommend that people consume more protein and fat, and less ultraprocessed foods.

These guidelines are the foundation for governmental nutritional programs – for example, they are used to determine which foods are covered by the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, as well as how school lunches are prepared. Eldercare centers and child care centers use them when providing meals, as do clinical nutritionists working with patients to help them achieve a healthy diet. And because the guidelines are so scientifically rigorous, many countries around the world base their own nutritional guidelines on them.

I’m a nutrition scientist specializing in developing interventions for preventing obesity. Between 2022 and 2024 I served on the scientific advisory committee tasked with assessing the best available evidence on a wide range of topics in nutrition in order to inform federal officials in updating the guidelines.

But most of the committee’s recommendations were ignored in developing the latest dietary guidelines.

On the surface, these guidelines share a lot of similarities with

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