The nominations of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., noted corn syrup critic, as the Secretary of Health and Human Services and Brooke Rollins as Secretary of Agriculture present a unique opportunity to reshape nutritional guidance in America.
Historically, the U.S. Dietary Guidelines have been a battleground for various interest groups, from dairy producers to the Sierra Club, vying to influence the recommendations that shape our nation's eating habits. These guidelines, revised every five years, are intended to provide science-based advice on what constitutes a healthy diet. The Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which includes the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), collaborate to develop the Dietary Guidelines for Americans.
However, the guidelines often end up reflecting the interests of certain crop producers or, more recently, environmental politics, rather than the latest nutritional science. It's no surprise that this one-size-fits-all approach does in fact not work for all Americans, and has even led some to an unhealthy hyperfixation on calories or particular components of food (like saturated fat or carbohydrates) rather than the overall quality of a food product.
Lately, one of the most contentious topics has been the role of red meat in the American diet. The last report from the 2025 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee recommended Americans reduce the amount of red meat consumed and eat more plant-based proteins. Frankly, this doesn't bode well for American beef producers and meat packers. This red meat scare is partly due to concerns about the environmental impact of livestock farming, but it also reflects a broader trend of integrating non-nutritional considerations into nutritional science.
The risk of politicized nutritional information looms over farmers' heads for good reason. Several decades ago, the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee and other independent organizations endorsed studies which wrongly concluded that eggs were not a healthy food to eat regularly and increased a variety of health risks. These studies have since been disproved, but the impact on egg producers was significant. It took decades of advertising and research to rehabilitate the egg to the American public.
More recently, the European Union's Farm to Fork strategy advocates that what is bad for the environment is bad for our health and as a result farmers are culling herds and selling their land to comply with their regulations. It's clear that both targeted interventions and soft-law guidelines or warnings can depress farm success and American health. Fortunately, President-elect Trump has made it clear that he is looking to govern differently during his upcoming administration.
We now have, perhaps for the first time in half a century, an opportunity to refocus nutritional science on actually promoting public health, hopefully the incoming Trump administration will seize the day.