The Departments of Health and Human Services and Agriculture released the 2025–2030 Dietary Guidelines for Americans today. The document is ten pages long; the previous edition ran 164. Its front-page message, in the government's words, is to eat real food. We have been saying that sentence for years, so we read the ten pages with interest and with the same question we bring to everything on this site: what does the evidence support, and where does the language get ahead of it?
What is in it. Ten headings. Prioritize protein at every meal, with a target of 1.2 to 1.6 grams per kilogram of body weight a day. Consume dairy, including full-fat dairy without added sugars. Eat vegetables and fruits throughout the day. Focus on whole grains, two to four servings, and significantly reduce refined carbohydrates. Limit highly processed foods, added sugars and refined carbohydrates — no daily added-sugar limit, but no more than 10 grams in a single meal, and none recommended for children under ten. Sodium under 2,300 milligrams a day for adults. Saturated fat at no more than 10% of calories, the same limit as before. And on alcohol, the old one-drink-for-women, two-for-men ceilings are gone, replaced by a plainer instruction: consume less for better overall health. The word "ultra-processed" does not appear; the document says "highly processed" throughout. Reporting today notes this is the first time the federal guidelines have formally recommended limiting processed food.
Where the language runs ahead. Three places. The secretary described, in remarks reported today, an end to the war on saturated fat, while the document keeps the 10% limit, which the American Heart Association still supports on the evidence; the limit and the rhetoric point in different directions. The protein target is well above the long-standing recommended allowance of 0.8 grams per kilogram, and while there is reasonable evidence that older adults do well with more, most Americans already exceed the allowance and the food industry has spent the past year putting the word on everything. And the new pyramid graphic puts red meat and cheese at the top and whole grains in the smallest section at the bottom — a visual that one member of the government's own advisory committee called disappointing, and that the written text does not quite match.
Loree’s takeThe headline instruction is the one I give every patient, and I am glad to see it on a federal document. The details are a mixed document that a careful reader can use: the processed-food guidance, the alcohol guidance and the sodium numbers are consistent with the weight of evidence; the saturated-fat rhetoric is not consistent with the document's own limit. Read the ten pages yourself. It takes fifteen minutes, which is less than one podcast.
Ben’s takeGuidelines are read most closely by the companies they regulate. Within a week there will be products with "real food" on the front and the same ingredient list on the back, and a protein claim justified by the 1.2-to-1.6 number. Watch two lines in the release: a beverage trade group complained today that the guidance dismisses no-sugar options, and a packaged-food trade group said it looks forward to working with the administration. The first tells you where the document bites. The second tells you where it doesn't.
Why it matters to a recovering optimizer. A government document now says the plainest version of this site's nutrition argument: mostly real food, less processed food, less sugar, less alcohol. That is useful. What the document cannot do is make the choice for you at the shelf, and some of what sits around its best sentence is politics and marketing. Take the sentence. Check the rest against the evidence, as you would with anything else.
Take the three words that are right — eat real food — and ignore the pyramid. The ingredient list already tells you which is which.