Keeping in line with the Make America Healthy Again agenda, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins announced major changes to the Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA) on Wednesday.

The new guidance flips the food pyramid upside down, advising Americans to eat whole foods, prioritizing healthy fats and protein, and limiting or avoiding ultra-processed foods.

Kennedy and Rollins say the war on “healthy fats” is over. Americans should prioritize high-quality, nutrient-dense protein foods in every meal, including a variety of animal sources, such as eggs, poultry, seafood, and red meat. Plant-sourced protein, such as beans, peas, lentils, legumes, nuts, seeds, and soy, is also recommended. 

The DGA also unsurprisingly advises against the consumption of ultra-processed foods. The guidance calls to “avoid highly processed, packaged, prepared, ready-to-eat, or other foods that are salty or sweet” and “avoid sugar-sweetened beverages, such as soda, fruit drinks, and energy drinks.”

And while fiber-rich whole grains are recommended as part of a healthy diet, the DGA emphasizes that refined carbohydrates should be avoided. 

Credit: HHS

Though the guidance is updated every five years by HHS and the USDA, there have been no major changes made to the DGA since its creation in 1980, making Kennedy and Rollins’ announcement particularly noteworthy. 

DGA guidance is extremely impactful and doesn’t just shape national messaging. It also heavily influences daycare and school lunch programs, military and hospital food, and even federal food assistance programs, like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). 

The DGA has been scrutinized for years, with critics arguing that it doesn’t reflect real science and has, instead, been heavily influenced by major companies and financial interests. For example, some scientists who serve on the DGA committee have received funding from food, beverage, or agricultural companies or even conduct research sponsored by industry groups. The conflicts are disclosed, but still raise red flags for Americans. 

Some of the most frequent criticisms of the DGA concern how ultra-processed foods were deemed acceptable and how low-fat diets, which often contain ultra-processed foods, are effectively promoted. Kennedy has outright called ultra-processed foods and additives “poison” and pinpointed them as a major culprit in the childhood obesity epidemic. 

Though the public health space has been routinely critical and even adversarial toward Kennedy and his agenda, most health professionals recognize that limiting ultra-processed foods and prioritizing whole foods is beneficial to health. 

The American Medical Association (AMA), for example, said in a statement that it “applauds the Administration’s new Dietary Guidelines for spotlighting the highly processed foods, sugar-sweetened beverages, and excess sodium that fuel heart disease, diabetes, obesity, and other chronic illnesses.”

“The Guidelines affirm that food is medicine and offer clear direction patients and physicians can use to improve health,” the AMA added. 

Where the disconnect still rears its head usually centers around the consumption of red meat. For example, The New York Times highlighted that some experts claim too much red meat can cause serious health problems, and such meat should be generally substituted with more plant-based sources of protein like beans, peas, and lentils.

The Senate is set to hold a hearing next week on the dangers of the abortion pill, as pro-life groups urge the Trump administration to roll back Biden-era rules allowing the drug to be shipped through the mail, The Daily Wire has learned. 

The hearing will be led by Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee. Cassidy has pushed for the Trump administration to end the mail-order abortion policies and release a safety study on the effects of mifepristone, the active drug used in medication abortions. 

“As a doctor and a strong pro-life conservative, I am committed to protecting mothers and the unborn. The medical evidence is clear: chemical abortion drugs not only kill innocent babies, but also put women in serious danger,” Cassidy told The Daily Wire. “As Chairman of the HELP Committee, I look forward to discussing how to uphold a culture of life and prioritize women‘s safety over political ideology.”

The hearing, titled “Protecting Women: Exposing the Dangers of Chemical Abortion Drugs,” will take place at 10:00 am in the Dirksen Senate Office Building. 

Medication abortions, now the most common abortion method, involve the use of two drugs: mifepristone and misoprostol. After a pregnant woman takes mifepristone, the unborn child is cut off from the vital nutrients it needs to survive and is effectively starved to death. Misoprostol is then used to induce labor and expel the deceased baby from the mother.

The hearing comes as Cassidy has pushed the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for answers after it approved another generic form of mifepristone in September, much to the surprise of pro-life advocates, and left in place rules allowing abortion pills to be mailed. In response, more than 51 senators asked for the FDA to reverse course and reinstate the in-person dispensing requirement. 

Earlier this year, Cassidy and 16 other GOP senators wrote a letter to FDA Commissioner Marty Makary in October asking if the agency was conducting a study into the dangers of the abortion pill and whether it was aware of cases in which women had been coerced into taking the drugs or given them without their knowledge. 

In one recent incident, an Ohio surgeon was charged after allegedly forcing his girlfriend to take an illegally obtained abortion pill, resulting in the death of her unborn child.

“The in-person dispensing requirement also helped guard women from being coerced into having chemical abortions against their will,” the senators wrote.

During his confirmation hearing, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said he would conduct a study into the abortion pill. That study has yet to be released, and some pro-life groups have accused the FDA of slow-walking it for political reasons. 

Data has shown that allowing abortion pills to be shipped by mail has resulted in tens of thousands of abortions in states like Texas and Tennessee, where medication abortions are technically illegal. This largely happens under “shield laws” in states like New York, which bar prosecution of those who ship abortion pills into states with abortion bans.