If you take anything at all from the latest edition of the federal dietary guidelines, out this week, it should be… not much. Although US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. described them as “the most significant reset of federal nutrition policy in history,” the new guidelines don’t reveal anything new about nutrition science, and most Americans can safely ignore them. (Luckily in this case, most already do.)If you’re a weirdo like me, however, the guidance offers a fascinating glimpse into the Make America Healthy Again movement’s push to remake American food culture, as well as the limits of those aspirations. A lot of its advice, to the relief of nutritionists and to the annoyance of some members of the MAHA coalition, is consistent with the expert consensus that has long formed the foundation of US dietary guidelines. Yet the guidelines also make a show of dispensing with expertise and making provocative, ill-supported recommendations in the language of science.Key takeaways• The Trump administration’s new dietary guidelines align in some ways with nutrition science consensus; in others, they contradict it.• The guidelines’ most dramatic change is an aggressive shift toward centering meat and dairy consumption, which puts the recommendations at odds with the scientific expert panel that made recommendations for this iteration of the guidelines.• The new upside-down food pyramid is confusing and is hard to read even on its own terms — it should perhaps be read more as an aesthetic symbol than a serious policy instrument.• But for all that, while the guidelines do shape many government food programs (including school meals), the practical impact of the new guidelines will likely be limited — most Americans don’t tend to follow government nutrition guidance.“Depending on which part of it you look at, you can conclude that not much has changed or things have dramatically” changed, writes Kevin Klatt, an assistant professor in the department of nutritional sciences at the University of Toronto. “There are multiple levels of contradictions and errors.”Parts of the guidelines read less like a professional or policy document than as an aggrieved manifesto. “We are ending the war on protein,” the guidelines’ showy new website declares. Perhaps most strikingly, to that stated end, the new guidelines make an aggressive turn to recommending an abundance of animal-sourced foods — meat and dairy — putting them at odds with both the consensus in nutrition science and the federal government’s own expert advisers.What are these guidelines again? The Dietary Guidelines for Americans, published every five years by the US Department of Agriculture and Department of Health and Human Services, aim to help the public make healthy food choices; they also directly govern what goes into billions of meals served every year through National School Lunch, and shape funding for other federal food programs. Most Americ Read More