U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration will release new dietary guidelines in December aimed at reducing high rates of obesity and changing the country’s food culture, U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said on Thursday, Nov. 6.
“We’re about to release dietary guidelines that are going to change the food culture in this country,” Kennedy told reporters during an event in the Oval Office, where Trump announced a deal with Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk to cut the price of weight loss drugs. “We’re releasing those in December.”
Kennedy says 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 says. “Obesity is the No. 1 driver of chronic disease.”
Fifty percent of the adult U.S. population is obese or overweight, Kennedy says, adding that it’s driving costs up for diabetes care and cardiac diseases.
The updated U.S. Dietary Guidelines for Americans, which influence school lunches, medical advice and nutrition standards, have been anticipated since summer. The new guidelines are expected to address saturated fat, found mainly in meat and certain oils, and ultra-processed food, along with modified suggestions related to dairy consumption, sources familiar with the process told Reuters in June.
The Department of Health and Human Services and USDA publish the guidelines jointly every five years.
The current dietary guidelines recommend limiting saturated fat to less than 10% of total calories consumed daily, and do not address ultra-processed food. The definition of ultra-processed food is hotly debated by the food industry, while the report describes it as industrially manufactured products.
The guidelines recommend limiting consumption of alcoholic beverages to one drink a day for women and two for men, or not drinking.
(Reporting by Steve Holland and Andrea Shalal; Editing by Hugh Lawson)
