Another important government task related to food is also coming to a close.
The 2025 Dietary Guidelines for Americans are designed to provide recommendations on what to eat and drink to create a healthy diet that can support healthy growth and development, help prevent diet-related chronic diseases, and meet nutrient needs.
The Expert Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, whose members were appointed in early 2023, has met five times, with just one more meeting possible if necessary on 25–26 September 2024. If there is a sixth meeting, registration details will be made public closer to the meeting date.
The committee consists of 20 nationally recognized experts in the field of food and nutrition.
Since 1990, the Secretaries of Agriculture and Health and Human Services have been required to issue the Dietary Guidelines for Americans every five years. The expert committee’s recommendations are passed on to the Secretary, who makes final decisions. The Dietary Guidelines have subsequently become the cornerstone of federal food and nutrition guidance.
“The nature of dietary guidance, which advises on which foods and nutrients to eat more or less of, has remained relatively consistent,” according to the government. “However, as nutritional science has progressed and the methods used to study the science have improved, some of the specific messages have changed.”
The five-year update cycle for the Dietary Guidelines is now coming to an end, a process that has been conducted with scientific rigor and has taken years.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), with input from federal experts and the public, identified the proposed scientific questions and then provided review by the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee.
It is up to committee members to refine and prioritize questions, collaborate to develop protocols that describe how they will examine the science, review and synthesize evidence based on their protocols, present their scientific findings, and consider public comments.
The Committee’s work will result in a comprehensive scientific report on the current state of nutrition science and will provide independent recommendations to HHS and USDA.
The Committee’s activities will terminate upon delivery of the report to the Secretaries or upon the expiration of its 2-year charter, whichever occurs first, and the Departments will develop the next edition of the Nutrition Guidelines in light of the Committee’s work, existing evidence-based federal guidance, federal agency input, and public comments.
The Committee reviewed the evidence using three approaches: data analysis, food pattern modeling, and systematic reviews. Each approach has its own rigorous, protocol-driven methodology and plays a unique, complementary role in reviewing the science. For each approach, HHS and USDA staff supported the Committee’s review of the evidence.
This year’s Guide update has yet to spark much controversy.
The committee looked into the fact that approximately 36 percent of people in the United States are lactose intolerant, according to the National Institutes of Health.
The potato industry has previously been concerned about the future of potatoes in this year’s and future Dietary Guidelines for Americans. But Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra sent a letter to Senator Susan Collins (R-Maine) assuring her that there is no intention or effort to reclassify potatoes as a grain under the guidelines.
USDA and HHS are jointly responsible for updating the guidelines.
“The Dietary Guidelines for Americans are a framework for healthy eating, not a one-size-fits-all formula,” the letter said. “The U.S. population is diverse, and that is reflected in what and how we eat.”
While the HHS and USDA acknowledge that most Americans are not following the guidelines, the U.S. wine industry is concerned about adhering to the World Health Organization’s guidelines. U.S. dietary guidelines say men can safely have two drinks a day and women can have one. Canada’s dietary guidelines recommend no more than two drinks a week, and surveys show that 66 percent of people ages 21 to 39 say they will cut back.
The current ninth edition of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA) is for 2020–25. For the first time, it includes nutritional guidelines for children from birth to 23 months.
At the end of the last five-year study, HHS and USDA rejected the recommendation of the last expert panel that recommended setting new lower targets for sugar and alcoholic beverage consumption.
Earlier this year, the German Nutrition Association (DGE) published new nutritional guidelines for Germany, with a greater focus on plant-based foods and an emphasis on health and sustainability.
Germany’s dietary guidelines recommend a diet of 75% plant-based and 25% animal-based. The guidelines also recommend plant-based fats, such as vegetable oils, over animal sources, such as butter.
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