by Rev. Chef Beth Love
Did you see the news released on January 7 about the new Dietary Guidelines for Americans? The dietary guidelines are updated every five years. They inform school lunch and other federal food programs and are supposed to reflect consensus in nutrition science. It would be a partial lie to say I was disappointed by the guidelines released Wednesday. What would be more accurate would be to say I was enraged. More about why later.
The beautiful, plant-rich graphic here is the image for the Ethiopian dietary guidelines. Ethiopia considered both human and planetary health in developing their guidelines, as have many other countries around the world in various stages of development. On the Ethiopian plate, the small wedge labeled with red directly above the healthy family contains the animal-sourced foods. The rest of the items, approximately 87 or 88% of the total, is all from plants, and almost all of it whole foods.
The guidelines depicted in this graphic reflect what the vast majority of evidence over many decades indicates is good for human health. And if everyone on Earth followed diets like this, the majority of our most pressing environmental challenges could be alleviated. There are many creative graphics from countries that base their guidelines in science, and I will put more in below so you can see variations.
In the United States, the precursor to the Dietary Guidelines for Americans came out in 1977. It was the work of the United States Senate Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs, chaired by Senator George McGovern. After holding hearings to review all the available science regarding nutrition and health, the committee issued a report, Dietary Goals for the United States, intended to represent nutrition guidelines for combating the leading killers of the time: heart disease, diabetes, cancer, obesity, stroke, etc. The report recommended Americans eat more fruits, vegetables, and whole grains, and less meat, egg, and dairy products as a way to increase fiber and complex carbohydrates and decrease fat and cholesterol. It also recommended reducing sugar consumption.
The report generated pushback. Under pressure from industry, the committee amended the guidelines, recommending that Americans eat more fiber and less saturated fat and cholesterol, with zero guidance as to which foods had these nutrients.
Before I continue the sad story of the U.S. guidelines, I thought I would share the Canadian plate. This plate conforms very closely to the Planetary Health Diet described by the EAT-Lancet Commission, a group of international scientists convened to answer the question of whether we could feed the 10 billion humans expected by 2050 a healthy, environmentally sustainable diet. You can see that 3/4 of the plate is exclusively plants, and the quarter that contains animal products also has high protein plant foods like beans, tofu, nuts, and seeds.
In 2006, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization released a report, Livestock’s Long Shadow, that detailed the massive environmental breakdown that was being driven by animal agriculture. Numerous studies were coming out that looked at the various environmental problems inherent in raising so many animals for food. In the ensuing decade or so, many countries began including environmental sustainability considerations into their guidelines. In 2015, the U.S. Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, which was the successor to the McGovern Committee, recommended a diet rich in plant foods to promote good health and support environmental sustainability. Industry pushed back again, and the final guidelines document that was released did not recommend plant-based diets or include sustainability recommendations.
This lovely graphic is from Qatar. You can see that, like the others, it is mostly whole plant foods. And, like the Canadian plate, the animal-based foods share a section with high-protein plant foods.
So, back in the US of A, the chronic diseases that were killing Americans during the years of the McGovern Committee are killing us at even greater rates now, and are impacting people at much younger ages. Meat consumption has continued to rise. While fluid milk consumption had a long period of decline, overall dairy consumption is much higher now than in the 1970s. The evidence is clear that we still haven’t followed the McGovern Committee’s initial recommendations, and our worsening state of health is the natural outcome.
In addition, the foods we are eating are fueling the industry that is the leading contributor to biodiversity loss, deforestation, desertification, fresh water use, habitat loss, land use change, ocean dead zones, and species extinctions, and is a crucial contributor to the climate crisis. Now, more than ever, we need dietary guidelines that restore our health and protect our Earth. And early last year, the 20 nutrition experts that made up the most recent US Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee released evidence-based recommendations for the 2025-2030 guidelines that would do just that—by promoting whole plant foods and minimizing animal-based foods.
Before we get into the sad tale of what happened to those recommendations, let’s lift our spirits by looking at another set of guidelines that promote both human and planetary health. These are from Mexico. This one might have the smallest portion of animal products of all the guidelines, about 8–10% of total food on the plate. The rest is almost entirely whole plant foods.
On January 7, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Agriculture released the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2025-2030. They chose to reject most of the recommendations of the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee. Instead, they recruited their own review panel of “experts” to ensure a supposedly scientific basis for their guidelines. They brazenly include a chart outlining the conflicts of interest of the panel members. According to their own document, a third of the members have financial ties to the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association. A third, with some overlap, are supported by the Dairy Council and several other dairy companies and advocacy groups. Other listed conflicts include the National Pork Board, Seafood Nutrition Partnership, and two companies and a foundation that promote high protein, low carbohydrate diets. Only two of the nine committee members appear to have no conflict of interest.
So there is a reason that the administration includes a herd of grazing cattle and a cowboy on a horse rounding up steers in their intro video. There are reasons that this review panel endorsed a new pyramid that prioritizes consumption of an abundance of animal products with high levels of saturated fat and cholesterol including whole milk, red meat, poultry, eggs, fish, tallow, butter, and cheese. And those reasons have nothing to do with science. Follow the money.
While the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee recommended that most of our protein come from legumes such as beans, lentils, chickpeas, and soy products, the official guidelines downplay their inclusion. The pyramid graphic doesn’t even include a single lentil, dried bean, or piece of tofu. There are some evidence-based recommendations in the guidelines, for example avoiding added sugar and chemical food additives, but the emphasis on large quantities of toxic animal products has the potential to make unhealthy Americans even less healthy.
This is a call to action. This blatant recommendation to Americans to make food choices that further endanger both human and planetary health incites me to even greater levels of commitment. This affront must be strongly refuted with evidence. It must be met with resistance.
I invite you to join me in rejecting fringe pseudo-science. Please help spread the word about what the vast majority of evidence over many decades has consistently found to be true, which is that humans are healthiest when we eat diets high in whole plant-foods such as vegetables, fruits, legumes, whole grains, and nuts and seeds.
Here is the final plate I will share. This one is from Germany and looks as though it contains about 80% whole plant food.
Please join me in holding a vision of the United States ultimately adopting food guidelines that enhance both human and planetary health, as so many countries have done. I do believe it’s possible and will continue to work toward this goal.
I do sincerely hope that you experience vibrant health this year. Eat for the Earth is here to support that outcome. Please let us know how we can support you in 2026!