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As I noted last May, I get asked all the time about what they will say, but have no inside information.  But this may be a good time to go over the clues.

The process

• A scientific advisory committee reviews the research and writes a report.  This was released in December.
• Unspecified (to date) people in USDA and HHS write the guidelines.

The promises

• They will come out “hopefully early fall” (this did not happen)
• Now, according to Reuters, the new dietary guidelines will be released some time in December.

What they won’t say

• They will not continue the tradition of “leftist ideology”  [I think this must mean plant foods]
• They will not promote seed oils (RFK Jr prefers beef tallow).
• They will not promote sugar; RFK Jr says sugar is poison.  [But declared a MAHA Win for Coca’ Cola’s replacement of high fructose corn syrup with cane sugar]
• They won’t say anything about sustainability [anything about climate change is forbidden]

What they will be about

[According to Reuters] Kennedy said the new guidelines would change the kind of food served to military service members and children in schools, but gave no details on the new recommendations.

“If we want to solve the chronic disease crisis, we have to tackle obesity,” Kennedy said. “Obesity is the number one driver of chronic disease,” he said, adding that 50% of the adult U.S. population was obese or overweight, driving costs up for diabetes care and cardiac diseases.

What they might say

Beef

• In its Plan to Fortify the Beef Industry, the USDA says the 2025–2030 Dietary Guidelines will “encourage protein as the foundation for every meal.”
• In an announcement to ranchers, USDA quotes RFK Jr, “we are restoring whole foods as the foundation of the American diet and ending the decades-old stigma against natural saturated fat in beef and dairy products. We will strengthen America’s ranching industry so families can choose nutrient-dense, minimally processed foods.”

Dairy

In a news conference, officials gave some clues.

We are going to be there for the dairy industry…our agencies are about to release more dietary guidelines in the next several months that will elevate those products to where they ought to be…There’s a tremendous amount of emerging science that talks about the need for more protein in our diet, and more fats in our diet, and there’s no industry that does that better than this industry.

Speculation

When RFK Jr first talked about the new guidelines, he said they would ignore the scientific advisory committee report and would be simple, short (5 pages), easy to understand, and out by September.  I’m guessing that the conflict between the science and ideology is proving more difficult to resolve than anticipated.

The science continues to argue for a largely (but not necessarily exclusively) plant-based diet, reduced in meat and ultra-processed foods from current levels.  RFK Jr initially talked about the need to reduce intake of ultra-processed foods, but the second MAHA report merely asked for a definition.

This administration seems obsessed with protein, a nutrient already in excess in US diets.

If it wants to do something about obesity, it needs the guidelines to suggest ways to reduce calories.  Nobody has mentioned that word so far.

As I keep saying, I can’t wait to see what the new guidelines will look like.  Stay tuned.

CivilEats’ Lisa Held writes: The Industry Ties Within Trump’s Food and Ag Leadership: Many of the president’s top officials at the USDA, EPA, HHS, and FDA have connections to chemical, agribusiness, or fossil fuel interests.

Really?  Yes.  And the list is long.

As Lisa describes the situation,

The picture of influence is all the more noteworthy because no president has been louder about “draining the swamp” of corporate influence in D.C. Those calls have gotten even more strident around food issues as a result of Trump’s alignment with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is a frequent critic of corporate influence on government policies…To begin to track the influence that industry may exert on the food system over the next four years, Civil Eats dug into the backgrounds of the most prominent individuals currently working on food and agriculture within federal agencies.

She then goes through the list, agency by agency.  Two examples :

I.  Mindy Brashears, USDA Undersecretary for Food Safety (nominated, not yet confirmed)

Brashears has consulted for Cargill, Perdue, and other meat industry giants. She held the same role during Trump’s first term, during which she played an essential role in keeping meatpacking plants running at the height of the pandemic. Congress later called her the “meat industry’s go-to fixer.” In her most recent ethics disclosure forms, she says she’ll resign from positions with Boar’s Head and the Meat Institute, the trade and lobby organization that represents the country’s biggest meatpackers, upon confirmation.

II. Calley Means, Special Advisor (to HHS Secretary RFK Jr)

Means often acts as Kennedy’s mouthpiece on MAHA priorities related to food and health. He is an outspoken member of the team, often accusing government employees of being beholden to industry. Because he’s a special government employee, Means does not have to fill out financial disclosure forms.

Means co-founded Truemed, a company that directs health savings account dollars toward wellness products and memberships that reportedly raised more than $32 million in venture capital earlier this year. Truemed has extensive partnerships with makers of supplements (an industry that wants HHS to loosen regulations), health technology, and other wellness products.

Comment

The list of food (and drug) officials with financial conflicts of interest is long and extensive.  This situation explains the non-regulatory approaches to food issues, and leaving such approaches to states.  If you are hoping that this administration will do anything to refocus production agriculture on food for people (rather than feed for animals and fuel for cars or planes), stop junk food marketing to children, improve school food, reduce ultra-processed food consumption, regulate the content and labeling of supplements, or anything else that might reduce food industry profits, it’s best to keep expectations low.

The EAT-Lancet Commission has released its updated report on “healthy, sustainable, and just food systems.”

Let me point out immediately that the report was written by a great many authors (I could not easily count them), is 76 pages long, and is pretty much impenetrable without a lot of hard work.

As it did in its first report in 2019, the Commission’s report defines a Planetary Health Diet (PHD), which

represents a dietary pattern that supports optimal health outcomes and can be applied globally for different populations and different contexts, while also supporting cultural and regional variation…The PHD is based entirely on the direct effects of different diets on human health, not on environmental criteria….[It] emphasises a balanced dietary pattern that is predominantly plant-based, with moderate inclusion of animal-sourced foods and minimal consumption of added sugars, saturated fats, and salt.

The report offers “eight solutions and 23 actions to enable food systems transformation, which can be organised into coherent bundles of interventions that simultaneously advance health, environmental, and justice goals.”

the exercise of corporate power in ways that undermine public interests. The high degree of corporate concentration across food systems remains an intractable governance issue, which is partly due to the vast influence of large transnational food and beverage companies with considerable power.

Vox was kind enough to produce this explanatory chart.CNN quotes author Walter Willett:

“A diet good for both people and the planet focuses on fruits, vegetables, nuts, legumes and whole grains — a moderate amount of meat and dairy — and very little added sugar, saturated fat and salt…When it comes to meat and dairy, think one plus one, Willett said — one daily serving of dairy, such as milk or yogurt, along with one daily serving of an animal protein such as fish, poultry, eggs or meat. Red meat (beef, lamb and pork) should be limited to a 4-ounce serving only once a week, however, due to its impact on overall health.

The Guardian: ‘Planetary health diet’ could save 40,000 deaths a day, landmark report finds

The diet – which allows moderate meat consumption – and related measures would also slash the food-related emissions driving global heating by half by 2050. Today, a third of greenhouse gas emissions come from the global food system and taming the climate crisis is impossible without changing how the world eats, the researchers said. Food production is also the biggest cause of the destruction of wildlife and forests and the pollution of water.

AP News:

About 15 million deaths could be avoided each year and agricultural emissions could drop by 15% if people worldwide shift to healthier, predominantly plant-based diets, according to the EAT-Lancet Commission, which brought together scientists worldwide to review the latest data on food’s role in human health, climate change, biodiversity and people’s working and living conditions.

Comment: The recommended diet for health—and also the planet and food justice—is extremely low in meat by U.S. standards.  It also directly opposes the MAHA movement’s emphasis on meat, beef tallow, and full-fat dairy, and its disapproval of seed oils and plant-based diets (these, according to the Secretaries of USDA and HHS, reflect “left-wing ideology”).

It breaks my heart to learn of the death of the great cookbook author and food politics writer, Marian Burros.

She was immensely important to me and to my work.

Marion Nestle and Marian Burros at NYU, 2018

Her obituary in the New York Times appeared on Saturday; I was interviewed for it some years ago and am quoted:

Marian was hugely ahead of her time in writing about the importance of food choices that not only improve health but also are sustainable and protect the environment…She was writing about the politics of food long before anyone dreamed that a food movement might exist.”

So true.  I first met her in the late 1980s when I was in DC working for Health and Human Services as managing editor of the Surgeon General’s Report on Nutrition and Health.  Marian was writing for the Washington Post and interviewed me about the report a couple of times.  Soon after, she moved to the New York Times and I moved to NYU.

In 1991, when the USDA withdrew the long-researched, about-to-be-published Eating Right Pyramid, ostensibly because it had not been tested on low-income women and children, I was contacted by a USDA staff person with documents proving that the real reason was pressure from meat producers who did not like the position of meat at the top of the pyramid.  As I tell in detail in my book, Food Politics, a USDA Deep Throat asked if I could get those documents to the press.

I called Marian Burros and asked if she’d be interested.  She was.

Her first of many articles on the pyramid scandal: Are cattlemen now guarding the henhouse? (it quotes me).

She worked on that story for a year, eventually digging out enough leaked information that she could piece together what the USDA was going to do—a bowl!

Her article so embarrassed the USDA that it had to admit the pyramid was a better option, and finally issued it.

In 1996, my NYU Department created undergraduate, master’s, and doctoral programs in Food Studies.  Clark Wolf, a food consultant who was advising us, told Marian Burros about the programs.

As soon as we had New York State approval for the programs, she wrote about them: A New View on Training Food Experts,

We had prospective students in our office that very afternoon, holding copies of the clipping, and saying they’d waited all their lives for this program.  Thanks to that publicity, even though this was mid-summer, we had a full class that fall.

And here we all were, celebrating the Department’s new teaching kitchen.

Three Marions—Nestle, Cunningham, and Burros (with an a)—and Clark Wolf at NYU’s newly renovated teaching kitchen in 1996.

She was one tough reporter.  She asked hard questions and insisted on answers.  She knew the food politics scene better than anyone.

I was sorry when she retired from the Times.  It seemed like a great loss.

It is a great loss.

Beef Checkoffs are USDA-sponsored programs that require producers to pay fees per cattle weight (the checkoff) into a common fund for research and promotion.  Here are three examples of the kinds of studies on beef and health that checkoff money pays for.  Note that all produce results favoring eating beef (what a coincidence).

I.  Eating beef protects against heart disease, cancer, and overall mortality

Ellen Fried sent me this headline from the New York Post: Eating meat not linked to higher risk of death — and may even protect against cancer-related mortality: study

Eating more meat could be beneficial for the body, a new study suggests [the study is here].

Recent research from Canada’s McMaster University revealed that animal-sourced foods are not linked to a higher risk of death.

The study discovered that animal proteins could also offer protective benefits against cancer-related mortality, according to a press release from the university.

If you scroll down far enough, the Post account, to its credit, ends with:

This research was funded by the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA), although the researchers noted that NCBA was “not involved in the study design, data collection and analysis or publication of the findings.”

II.  Beef has no effect on weight gain, obesity, or related metabolic conditions.

Effect of unprocessed red meat on obesity and related factors: A systematic review and meta-analysis.  Md Akheruzzaman, Marleigh Hefner, Daniel Baller, Shane Clark, Zahra Feizy, Diana M. Thomas, Nikhil V. Dhurandhar.  Obesity.  2025. 25 July 2025.  https://doi.org/10.1002/oby.24322

Results: We found no significant effect of URM [unprcessed red meat] for BMI, body weight, or percent body fat based on unfiltered pooled effect sizes. Filtered pooled effect size analysis showed a slight adverse effect of URM for total cholesterol and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol.

Conclusions: Studies did not show an effect of URM on weight gain, obesity, or related metabolic conditions.

Funding: This study received funding from the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) Beef Checkoff.

Conflict of interest: [The lead author] received grant support from the Beef Checkoff for conducting the systematic review and meta-analysis. The sponsor did not have any role regarding the study design, data extraction, analysis, or reporting.

III.  Vitamins and race are more important for health than beef intake.

“Shaking the ladder” reveals how analytic choices can influence associations in nutrition epidemiology: beef intake and coronary heart disease as a case study  Vorland, C. J., O’Connor, L. E., Henschel, B., Huo, C., Shikany, J. M., Serrano, C. A., … Brown, A. WCritical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition, 2025:1–16. https://doi.org/10.1080/10408398.2025.2525459

We explored the impact of analytical decisions on conclusions in nutrition epidemiology using self-reported beef intake and incident coronary heart disease as a case study….The finding of few statistically significant models does not prove, but may suggest, minimal association between beef and CHD. A qualitative inspection of our figures suggested that two variables had the greatest influence on results: years of multivitamin use and race…Not adjusting for these particular covariates, which indirectly capture concepts related to health consciousness and SES, may produce more extreme results because of confounding.

Funding: Funded by the Beef Checkoff….

Disclosure statement: In the 36 months prior to the initial submission, Dr. Vorland has received honoraria from The Obesity Society and The Alliance for Potato Research and Education. In the 36 months prior to the initial submission, Dr. Allison has received personal payments or promises for same from: Amin Talati Wasserman for KSF Acquisition Corp (Glanbia); Clark Hill PLC; General Mills; Kaleido Biosciences; Law Offices of Ronald Marron; Medpace/Gelesis; Novo Nordisk Fonden; Sports Research Corp.; USDA; and Zero Longevity Science (as stock options). Donations to a foundation have been made on his behalf by the Northarvest Bean Growers Association. The institution of Dr. Vorland, Ms. Henschel, Mr. Serrano, Ms. Dickinson, and Dr. Allison, Indiana University, and the Indiana University Foundation have received funds or donations to support their research or educational activities from: Alfred P. Sloan Foundation; Alliance for Potato Research and Education; American Egg Board; Arnold Ventures; Eli Lilly and Company; Mars, Inc.; National Cattlemen’s Beef Association; Pfizer, Inc.; National Pork Board; USDA; Soleno Therapeutics; WW (formerly Weight Watchers); and numerous other for-profit and nonprofit organizations to support the work of the School of Public Health and the university more broadly. Dr. O’Connor’s research is funded by internal funds at the Agricultural Research Service, USDA and the National Cancer Institute, NIH as well as external funds from the National Institute of Agricultural, USDA and the Beef Checkoff. Dr. O’Connor also served unpaid on the National Pork Board – Real Pork Research Advisory 2nd Advisory Council. In the past 36 months, Dr. Brown has received travel expenses from Alliance for Potato Research and Education, International Food Information Council, and Soy Nutrition Institute Global; speaking honoraria from Alliance for Potato Research and Education, Calorie Control Council, Eastern North American Region of the International Biometric Society, International Food Information Council Foundation, Potatoes USA, Purchaser Business Group on Health, The Obesity Society, and University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences; consulting payments from National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, and Soy Nutrition Institute Global; and grants through his institution from Alliance for Potato Research & Education, American Egg Board, National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, NIH/NHLBI, NIH/NIDDK, NIH/NIGMS, and NSF/NIH. He has been involved in research for which his institution or colleagues have received grants or contracts from ACRI, Alliance for Potato Research & Education, Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Hass Avocado Board, Indiana CTSI, NIH/NCATS, NIH/NCI, NIH/NIA, NIH/NIGMS, NIH/NLM, and UAMS. His wife is employed by Reckitt. Other authors report no disclosures in the last 36 months prior to the initial submission.

I’m indebted to Errol Schweizer, Grocery Nerd, for pointing out in response to my post on we need more vegetables, that if we want more vegetables, somebody has to pick them.  Raids by ICE on farmworkers are not helping this situation; they are wrong, morally and legally, and must stop.

Schweizer writes:  RFK Betrays/ICE Terrorizes Food Workers.

The Border Patrol and Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE) division continue to kidnap, persecute and traffic hard working, law-abiding essential food supply chain workers for no just cause.

Now is the time for the grocery industry, including retail and CPG executives, essential workers, brand founders and Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) advocates to stand up against these flagrant violations of human rights, due process, civil liberties and just plain decency.

From the New York Times: Wilted Lettuce. Rotten Strawberries. Here’s What Happens When You Round Up Farmworkers. 

Bottom line, it isn’t easy for farmers and ranchers to replace farmworkers if they’re deported or don’t show up. These positions require experience, endurance and specialized knowledge; as anyone who has worked on a farm will tell you, farm work is not unskilled labor.

From FoodPrint: How the current immigration crackdown is impacting food and farmworkers

Around 40 percent of farmworkers in the U.S. are undocumented. The numbers are similar in many other parts of the food system, especially meatpacking, where undocumented immigrants fill an estimated 23 percent of jobs. ..For the most part, farmers supported the Trump administration in the election, with many believing the president’s claims that he would spare farmworkers from promised mass deportations, focusing instead on “dangerous criminals”….[But] ICE agents began aggressively targeting worksites, visiting farms and packing sites in California and a meatpacking plant in Nebraska on June 10. Those raids generated an immediate flurry of complaints from farmers and the food industry.

From Civil Eats: ICE Raids Target Workers on Farms and in Food Production: A Running List

Immigration enforcement actions at workplaces are likely to increase as the agencies attempt to meet new White House goals of 3,000 arrests per day. We are keeping a record of those actions here.

Here is Civil Eats’ list for August, with contact information for Lisa Held, who is keeping track of all this.

August 7, 2025 – Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania – ICE detains 16 workers during raids of two Mexican restaurants

August 8, 2025 – Woodburn, Oregon – ICE detains four immigrant farmworkers on their way to work at a blueberry farm

August 11, 2025 – Anchorage, Alaska – ICE officials arrest an asylum seeker outside sushi restaurant

August 14, 2025 – Kent, New York – ICE raids Lynn-Ette Farms—where United Farm Workers have been organizing— and detains seven workers

Want to send us a tip about immigration enforcement in your community? Email tracker@civileats.com or securely contact Lisa Held on Signal at @lisaelaineh.47. (Link to this post.)

Enjoy the Labor Day holiday, but then do what you can to make this stop.

The big news in my world last week was the leaking of drafts of the forthcoming MAHA strategy report.

At least four reporters sent me copies for comments.

• Leaked version dated August 6 (highlighted to indicate food issues)
• Leaked version dated August 11 (no highlights)

I did not do a careful comparison.  The main difference seems to be that the earlier version had this useful graphic about MAHA’s strategic intentions.

All of this may change when the final report is released, but here are my initial thoughts on its food sections.

First, the background: The first report, despite the hallucinated references, was a strong indictment of this country’s neglect of the health of our children. It stated the problems eloquently. It promised that the second report would state policies to address those problems.

As for this report: No such luck.

It states intentions, but when it comes to policy, it has one strong, overall message: more research needed.

Regulate?  Not a chance, except for the long overdue closure of the GRAS loophole (which lets corporations decide for themselves whether chemical additives are safe).

Everything else is waffle words: explore, coordinate, partner, prioritize, develop, or work toward.”

One good thing: the report mentions marketing to children, but only to “explore development of industry guidelines.”  Nothing about regulation.  This is too little too late.  We know what food marketing does to kids.  It’s way past time to stop it.

A few comments on specific issues mentioned.

• “USDA will prioritize precision nutrition research…”  USDA?  NIH is already doing that, and it is the antithesis of public health research, the kind that really will make Americans healthier.
• The report emphasizes color and other chemical additives (we knew it would), a definition (not regulation) of ultra-processed foods, and a potential front-of-pack label (unspecified).
• It says it will modernize infant formula (really? how?), and will work to increase breastfeeding (again, how?).

And then there are the contradictions:

• Improve hospital food, but the administration is taking money away from hospitals.
• Teach doctors about nutrition (how?)
• Prioritize “whole healthy foods” in nutrition assistance programs (but cut SNAP and WIC)
• Expand EFNEP (but eliminate SNAP-ED)
• Promote healthy meals in child care settings (also defunded)
• Encourage grocery stores in low-income areas (how?)

How are they going to do this?  It doesn’t say.

Are there any teeth behind it?  It doesn’t look like this is anything more than voluntary (and we know how voluntary works with the food industry; it doesn’t).  None of this says how or has any teeth behind it.

And oh no!  MAHA boxes.  I’m guessing these are like what got given out—badly—during the pandemic. 

Resources

• Politico: it published the first leak.  Its current headline: “quite industry friendly”
• Stat News (I’m quoted): This covers the entire report and emphasizes the reneging on trying to reduce pesticides in response to industry lobbying
• New York Times (I’m quoted): also a much longer story emphasizing the pesticide problem
• Washington Post: also emphasizing ag issues
• CNN (I’m quoted): lots on processed foods, as well
• Civil Eats: Should Regenerative Farmers Pin Hopes on RFK Jr.’s MAHA?
• Center for Science in the Public Interest: 

It is striking that the leaked Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Strategy Report, like its AI-assisted predecessor, embodies much of the idiosyncratic beliefs about food and drugs of one person: Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. He might be right about food dyes, but the report’s recommendations to alter our vaccine framework, restructure government agencies, and promote meat and whole milk are going to promote disease, not health…

The report…seems to twist itself into knots to make it clear that it will not be infringing upon food companies….But we also need to judge the administration by what it does, not what it says. And the administration’s attacks on SNAP, Medicaid, the health insurance exchanges, and the FDA and USDA workforces are poised to make America sicker, hungrier, and more at risk from unsafe food.

• John Oliver on the MAHA movement’s lack of genuine policy initiatives (I’m quoted!)  Do not miss this one.

Politico reports: White House invites 46 farm, food groups to discuss MAHA report

The MAHA report, as I’ve written, could have enormous implications for food system businesses.  The problems it describes with the health of America’s children call for policies that could reduce profits for companies that, for example, produce seed oils, food products with color additives, and ultra-processed foods in general.

The secretaries of HHS and USDA have promised to soon issue dietary guidelines to reduce intake of such foods.

Food companies making products targeted by such views are unlikely to be happy with the report.  If past history is any indication, they will lobby for exceptions, exemptions, and delays, and will insist that the proposed measures have no scientific basis (which some indeed do not), violate the First Amendment, and will cost jobs—the playbook that worked for such a long time for the tobacco industry.

The Politico report is behind a paywall, but Helena Bottemiller Evich obtained a list of who has been invited and writes the details in FoodFix: White House holds flurry of industry meetings in wake of MAHA drama. 

Her list shows separate meetings for fruit and vegetable producers and trade groups, and those for meat and dairy, restaurants, grocers, beverage companies (Big Soda), commodity groups, and Big Ag.

Oh to be a fly on those walls.

It’s hard for me to believe that this administration will do anything to reduce business interests, and early indications are that RFK Jr is merely calling for companies to take voluntary actions, and individuals to take personal responsibility—neither of which is likely to have any chance of Making America Healthy Again.

I look forward to seeing what they do with the dietary guidelines and the next MAHA Commission report on policy—both expected by the end of the summer, apparently.  Stay tuned.