The updated 2025–2030 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, announced under Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., signals a return of some sanity.
For the first time in nearly 50 years, we’re finally moving away from a model created for corporate health, not human.
The 1977 Dietary Guidelines: Debunked
The 1977 guidelines centered a low-fat model despite ample evidence that a high-carb, processed food diet it sanctioned actually promoted disease.
Manufacturers replaced fats with refined carbohydrates, sugar, seed oils, additives, and engineered ultra-processed formulations designed to meet the guidelines while remaining profitable. The result has been public metabolic collapse:
- Only about 12% of U.S. adults are metabolically healthy—most show signs of insulin resistance, elevated blood sugar, dyslipidemia, abdominal adiposity, or hypertension (Metabolic Syndrome and Related Disorders).
- Obesity has more than doubled since 1977, affecting nearly 42% of adults today.
- Type 2 diabetes in adults has more than doubled since the late 1970s, and incidence in youth has roughly doubled since the early 2000s. Nearly one-third of U.S. teens are already pre-diabetic.
- Autoimmune diseases—Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, celiac disease, rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease, etc.—have risen sharply, driven by barrier dysfunction, intestinal permeability, and chronic antigenic exposure through ultra-processed foods.
- Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), virtually absent in the 1970s, now affects 25–30% of the adult population, with alarming prevalence in children as young as 8–10 years old.
- Neurodevelopmental dysfunction—ADHD, learning disabilities, behavioral disorders—has climbed in tandem with blood-sugar dysregulation, micronutrient depletion, and chronic exposure to food additives and refined carbohydrates.
At our RedRiver Health and Wellness clinics, we treat hundreds of patients daily across eight clinics and have observed these patterns directly. The correlation with a government-sanctioned processed food diet is not a coincidence, it’s a mechanism.
What the New Dietary Guidelines Get Right
The 2025 update is expected to correct several foundational errors:
Prioritizing whole foods over focusing on isolated nutrients. Previous guidelines were designed to be met by processed foods fortified with synthetic nutrients. Whole foods contain cofactors, phytonutrients, and bioavailable mineral forms that isolated nutrients cannot replicate, providing metabolic and immune outcomes processed alternatives cannot match.
Recognition of ultra-processed foods as a disease driver. The guidelines now explicitly identify processed foods engineered with seed oils, refined sugars, additives, and emulsifiers as central to chronic disease development. This is a huge return to sanity.
Simplification for implementation. Guidance around whole foods is easier to implement for institutions than complex macronutrient targets.
How the new 2025 Dietary Guidelines help steer us back to better health
The new guidelines acknowledge the impact of diet on metabolic and immune health, with the potential to help alleviate the strain on healthcare.
Blood sugar and insulin stability. Whole foods are dense in fiber, resistant starch, and complex carbohydrates, which help stabilize glucose and prevent the insulin spikes that drive inflammation, visceral fat, and fatty liver.
Gut barrier restoration. Ultra-processed foods containing emulsifiers, additives, and industrialized seed oils that promote leaky gut and gut inflammation. This matters because gut barrier dysfunction drives inflammation and autoimmune activation.
Immune regulation. Nutrient-dense whole foods support immune system regulation and resilience needed to dampen inflammation, prevent or manage autoimmunity, and provide better resilience to viral and bacterial infections.
Mitochondrial function and energy production. Whole foods support efficient ATP production for cellular energy. Patients who switch to an anti-inflammatory whole foods diet report improved energy, reduced pain, and stabilized hormonal function.
Microbiome rebalancing. Diverse fiber, resistant starch, and polyphenols from whole foods support a healthy gut microbiome diversity, essential for regulating immune function.
We already know this works
The new guidelines bring federal policy into alignment with what functional medicine practitioners have demonstrated in practice for years.
In my clinics, we’ve long prioritized anti-inflammatory whole-food protocols to manage autoimmune conditions, metabolic dysfunction, and improve athletic performance and recovery.
The new framework isn’t radical. It’s a return to basic principles of human health: eat real food, minimize processing, and prioritize nutrient density. It’s what humans have always required, what the evidence overwhelmingly supports, and what functional medicine has long been advocating.
you.
