The good and the bad of the new US dietary guidelines | Dr David Katz

Simon Hill· Host0:00

Welcome to The Proof. In early 2025, the United States released its newest dietary guidelines for Americans, and almost immediately, alarm bells started ringing. These guidelines are updated every five years. They influence school lunch programs, food policy, and even what your doctor recommends. They're supposed to represent our best science on nutrition today. But something unusual happened this time. The guidelines followed a multi-year review by expert scientists, including researchers like Dr. Christopher Gardner from Stanford University. Yet when the final recommendations were published, many of their evidence-based suggestions were either ignored or contradicted. Meat and full-fat dairy now sit at the top of the food pyramid, and legumes, well, they barely get a mention. And the words sustainable, climate, and planet don't appear once in the entire document. Meanwhile, the Secretary of Health and Human Services is celebrating his birthday with a plate of steak, saying he eats only meat and fermented foods. So what's going on here? Has the science legitimately changed, or are these new guidelines based on something other than evidence? Today, I'm speaking with Dr. David Katz, a preventive medicine physician and one of the most trusted voices in nutrition science today. He's been watching these guidelines evolve and change for decades, and today he's not holding back. This