Dietary Guidelines are not coming out for summer, but maybe before winter

If you are waiting for the promised summer release of the updated  Dietary Guidelines for Americans, you can stop. The end of October is the new promised release date, according to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

The Dietary Guidelines for Americans were first released in 1980 and have since been updated every five years.  The health department (HHS) and USDA jointly produce the guidelines. 

The Scientific Report of the 2025 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee (Scientific Report) was submitted to the HHS and USDA Secretaries in late 2024, with public comment on the Scientific Report ending on Feb. 10 this year.

The wait for the Dietary Guidelines for Americans for 2025-2030 has been ongoing since then.

Of course, the change in administrations is responsible for the delay.  RFK Jr. and USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins have something different in mind than their immediate predecessors. Kennedy and Rollins have until the end of the year to issue the updated guidelines.

The HHS Secretary told the nation’s governors meeting in Colorado that “we are going to issue [the guidelines] by December, but we’re probably going to get them out at the end of October.”  Before that he had said the official line was that the guidelines were “on track” for summer release.

Pitching his “Make America Healthy Again” agenda to the governors, RFK Jr. said the new guidelines would be “common sense” and “stress the need to eat saturated fats, dairy, good meat, fresh meat, and vegetables.” He predicts that their update of the guidelines will result in massive change across the board, and the new guidelines will be an opportunity to “reboot and change diets,” he says.

The development of the Dietary Guidelines by HHS and USDA involves a step-by-step process of writing, review, and revision, supported by a writing team of federal staff from both departments. 

The draft Dietary Guidelines undergo several rounds of review and revisions by peer-reviewers outside the federal government and all Agencies with nutrition policies and programs across USDA and HHS, such as NIH, FDA, CDC, ARS, FNS, and FSIS. 

The final step of this process is departmental clearance, which ends with the review and sign-off of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans by the Secretaries of USDA and HHS. 

Once released, the new edition of the Dietary Guidelines replaces the previous edition. The release of the new edition is communicated to nutrition and health professionals within and outside of the federal government for broad implementation.

The need for dietary guidelines grew out of the work of the U.S. Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs from 1968 to 1977.  Its only chairman was Sen. George McGovern, D-SD.

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