When Project 2025 started making headlines this summer, it was largely about conservative “wish list” policies for a future Trump administration to restructure the entire federal bureaucracy, deepen abortion restrictions, and eliminate the Department of Education.
But the document, written by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, and a proposed mandate for the next Republican president, also outlines steps that would radically transform food and farming and curtail recent progress toward addressing the oversupply of overprocessed food in the United States . These include: weakening the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap), ending policies that take into account the effects of climate change, and eliminating U.S. dietary guidelines.
“This is a deregulatory agenda,” said Marion Nestle, a professor of nutrition and food policy at New York University. “And what we know historically from deregulation is that it’s really bad for consumers, it’s bad for workers, it’s bad for the environment.”
Project 2025 proposes changes to the country’s food aid programs, such as Snap and the complementary feeding program for Women, Infants and Children (Wic), which Nestle believes aims to eliminate such programs. It also calls for an end to subsidies for school meals.
But one of the most notable proposals is to call on the next Republican president to eliminate or reform dietary rules. These guidelines form the basis of all federal food policies, from school meals to Snap, Wic, and other programs.
“There is no shortage of private sector nutritional advice available to the public, and nutrition and dietary choices are best left to individuals to meet their personal needs,” the document states.
The food industry has long promoted the idea that chronic, diet-related health problems such as diabetes and obesity are the result of individual choices, such as not getting enough exercise. Today, approximately 42% of adults in the United States are obese and approximately 12% have diabetes. But nutritionists emphasize that these conditions are not the result of a moral failure, but rather conditions caused by the ingredients and policies implemented by food companies (such as aggressive advertising towards children).
Nestle sees this as one of many pro-business policies outlined in Project 2025’s agriculture provisions that rely on companies to prioritize public health over profits.
“There are twice as many calories in the food supply as the country’s average needs. “Therefore, the food industry is extremely competitive in selling calories,” he said. “Republicans want to remove regulations and give these food businesses every opportunity to make as much money as possible, regardless of the impact on health and the environment.”
Experts also fear that Project 2025 could undermine work done by the Food and Drug Administration and Department of Agriculture to limit the flow of ultra-processed foods in the U.S. food supply.
Today, ultra-processed foods make up 73% of the U.S. food supply and provide the average U.S. adult with more than 60% of their daily calories, according to Northeastern University. Although the science is still evolving, researchers are increasingly linking UPFs to a number of health conditions, including diabetes, obesity, depression, and some cancers.
Work is underway at the FDA to develop a front-of-package label that would require companies to print on the front of products indicating when a product is high in sugar, fat, sodium or calories (the exact label has not yet been determined). not yet publicly disclosed). Although the label does not specifically state when a food is overly processed, it may apply to high levels of UPFs in the food system because many contain large amounts of these nutrients.
At USDA, members of the U.S. dietary guidelines advisory committee are currently meeting and will make their recommendations for the 2025-30 dietary guidelines later this year. The committee is also charged with evaluating research on UPFs while considering its recommendations to the USDA and the Department of Health and Human Services. It’s unclear what they’ll recommend and whether that recommendation will make it into the 2025 dietary guidelines, but the fact that the committee is even considering ultra-processing is a significant development.
But while Project 2025 does not make specific reference to front-of-package nutrition labels like the one currently under review at the FDA, Lindsey Smith Taillie, professor of nutrition at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and co-director of the Global Food Research Program, said eliminating nutrition rules would inevitably He says it will affect them.
“It’s like they’re removing scientific evidence from federal food policy,” he said.
Even if Trump isn’t elected next month, Philip Kahn-Pauli, director of legislative affairs at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, says he’s “already seeing the impact of his Project 2025 policy proposals in Congress today.”
The Republican-controlled House of Representatives said it is considering a bill that would “fundamentally change” the nutrition rules process as it approves funding for government agencies in 2025. The budget bill would, among other things, override the 2025 nutrition rules currently in process. Although that bill was abandoned in favor of one that continues to fund the government, Kahn-Pauli said “the fact that there is such a partisan attack” on dietary rules “signals a new focus on undermining evidence-based policy.” He expects to see more attacks on the guidelines in the new year.
Nestle says Project 2025 will promote industry over climate, public health or welfare concerns across the food system: “The basic principle here is: don’t do anything that will reduce industry profits.”