Trump Administration Endorses ‘Real Food’ — And Saturated Fats — In New Dietary Guidelines

The Trump administration announced dramatically transformed federal dietary guidelines on Wednesday, suggesting new limits on ultra-processed foods and endorsing the consumption of saturated fats in red meat and dairy products for the first time in decades.

The changes to the dietary guidelines will shift standards for school lunches, food stamps, military food programs and prisons.

They endorse the increasingly standard nutrition guidance to eat whole foods over processed ones, but also contradict widely accepted nutrition advice to limit saturated fats.

“These are the foundation to all federal food programs in our country. These new guidelines are going to update the food that is served to America’s children in our public schools,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said at a press briefing, adding that the guidelines will also shape how food stamp programs are designed.

During the press conference, both Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins emphasized that people should “eat real food,” an idea widely endorsed by nutritionists and doctors as accessible, straightforward nutrition advice.

Both Kennedy and Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Marty Makary spent significant time in Wednesday’s press conference defending the consumption of saturated fats. Both said the standard medical advice to avoid saturated fats had contributed to the rise in processed foods consumption.

“We are ending the war on saturated fats,” Kennedy said.

The American Heart Association is among the many medical establishments that recommend people limit their consumption of saturated fats because decades of research show that the consumption of saturated fats can increase cholesterol and risk of heart disease.

“Today marks the beginning of the end of an era of medical dogma on nutrition. For decades, we’ve been fed a corrupt food pyramid that has had a myopic focus on demonizing natural, healthy saturated fats,” Makary said. Makary is the author of a book that challenges existing guidance about saturated fats.

The dietary guidelines do not actually change the existing recommended limits on saturated fat content, but they endorse the consumption of fats like butter and beef tallow and no longer advocate for the consumption of lower-fat alternatives.

Despite their endorsement of saturated fats, the new guidelines earned immediate praise from the American Medical Association.

“The guidelines affirm that food is medicine and offer clear direction patients and physicians can use to improve health,” Bobby Mukkamala, the president of the AMA, said in a statement.

The guidelines also removed the existing suggested limits on alcohol consumption, instead suggesting that people lower how much they drink. The administration defended the change in Wednesday’s press conference by suggesting that alcohol is not healthy but remains important as a “social lubricant.”

The new guidelines also returned the image of the food pyramid, only flipped so that the small point of the triangle is on the bottom. The Obama administration removed the food pyramid in its update of the dietary guidelines, replacing it with an image of a plate, because the pyramid was widely considered to be difficult to understand.