FDA Rewrites its ‘Healthy’ Foods Guidelines for First Time in 30 Years
Nuts and seeds, salmon, olive oil, and canned fruits and vegetables are among those that will newly qualify for a “healthy” label.

As we enjoy the holiday week food-based festivities and look forward to 2025, I note with interest that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently finalized new rules for labeling foods as “healthy” for the first time in 30 years, updating the guidelines to align with its version of nutritional science.
The United States has redefined what qualifies as “healthy” food for the first time in 30 years, striking items like white bread from the list while welcoming nutrient-rich options such as eggs and salmon, officials said Thursday.
The move comes against the backdrop of a growing domestic crisis of preventable, diet-related chronic diseases, which experts warn demand immediate action.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) also announced it is developing a new symbol to help manufacturers quickly signal to consumers that a food meets the “healthy” criteria.
“Diet-related diseases, including heart disease, cancer and diabetes, are the leading cause of disability and disease in the United States and contribute to America’s status having the lowest life expectancy amongst large high-income countries,” senior FDA official Jim Jones told reporters.
A few thoughts come to mind, as related to this announcement. Personally, I find the timing intriguing, as President/President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for leading Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., has the FDA and the American diet in his crosshairs.
The move may be an attempt to make the food division a less appealing target for Kennedy’s attention.
The FDA’s food division, poised to play a significant role in Kennedy’s ambitions, operates on a tight budget. Unlike the agency’s drug division, which sustains itself largely through user fees charged to pharmaceutical companies when they apply for drug approval, its food division relies more heavily on funding from Congress, said Jerold Mande, a former FDA senior adviser and former deputy undersecretary for food safety at the Department of Agriculture. (Separately, Kennedy has suggested he wants to end user fees, arguing the system creates a conflict of interest.)
Historically, Mande said, Congress has been reluctant to provide money to the agency’s food and nutrition program.
“The FDA’s food program has a billion-dollar budget, and only $25 million of that goes to food nutrition and chronic disease,” said Mande, now an adjunct professor at Harvard University and the CEO of Nourish Science, a food advocacy group. “So there’s almost no money for it, and that is the No. 1 barrier: they don’t have the budget or staff to do anything.”
The industry, she said, likely spends millions more on lobbying Congress.
Kennedy’s ideas about food are “great,” she said, but “how you do that, I’m not so sure.”
However, many are quite skeptical about these new guidelines.
Beef and saturated fats are healthy food. They are still denying that, not for health reasons, but for ideological ones.
— Rallenac (@rallenac) December 20, 2024
As I have noted before, red meat is an essential part of a truly healthy diet.
Furthermore,the new rules were developed as part of a national strategy outlined by the Biden Administration at the Conference on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health in 2022.
Use of “healthy” labeling is voluntary for food manufacturers. Foods that meet the new requirements can start using the label early next year, while those that don’t currently meet the standards of the new rule have three years to conform.
…The FDA is also working on a symbol that can be put on packages to help consumers more easily identify foods that are considered healthy and developing a plan for nutrition labeling that would go on the front of food packaging to complement the more in-depth labels on the back.
What has the Biden administration done that was truly in the best interest of the American people? And slapping a decorative pictogram on a product is hardly innovative and not likely to make substantive change in diet priorities.
And, it appears that “diversity-equity-inclusion” calculations went into guideline development.
FDA noted that the updates to this “healthy” criteria will allow affordable, accessible, and culturally preferred nutrient-dense foods within different groups and subgroups to contain the “healthy” claim, including frozen, canned, dried, and other shelf-stable products.
Yet, to be fair, a portion of the new guidelines are sensible.
Under the rule, products that claim to be “healthy” must contain a certain amount of food from one or more food groups such as fruit, vegetables, grains, dairy and protein. And for the first time, the rule sets certain limits for added sugars. Foods must also limit sodium and saturated fat at levels that depend on the type of product, the FDA said.
The change banishes foods such as sugary cereals, highly sweetened yogurts, white bread and some granola bars from bearing a “healthy” label, while allowing foods such as avocados, olive oil, salmon, eggs and some trail mix to use it. Even water can now be labeled as healthy, the agency said.
FDA overhauls 'healthy' foods definition…. “High-sugar cereals, protein bars, and yogurts once labeled 'healthy' no longer will qualify. Meanwhile, new 'healthy' foods will include olive oil, salmon, canned vegetables”… [Daily Mail] https://t.co/zFtobgCeUs
— Michelle Rogers CPT, CHC (@MRhealthyliving) December 20, 2024
It will be interesting to see if RFKJr can clear the Senate confirmation hearing hoops and improve upon these new rules, without the undue influence of the food industry lobby.

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Comments
minimum 5 servings of fruits and vegtables a day – a no brainer. No processed foods or sugar (high frucrose sugar). 4-6 oz of meat/protein a day. By far, the best weight loss diet in the world.
The less processed the better, the closer to the farm or ranch the better. The more home prepared food the better. Add to that common sense the basic self discipline to do moderate exercise and adhere to healthier choices. Obesity and the bad health consequences that come from it are almost entirely a result of not doing these things. Sure there are a fraction of people with some abnormality like a thyroid issue and they will have to be even more disciplined than normal to overcome it. Nobody said life was fair or easy.
fwiw – I have a problem with the concept of “Moderate exercise” . At age 68 – 10-12 hours per week of which 2-3 hours is high intensity (zone 4-5) and 7-9 hours zone 1 or 2. combined with 1-1.5 hours weight training per week. Still racing in crit races. 100 mile bike rides in 4.5 hours
I suspect the obese and the overweight tend to have a bigger problem with moderate exercise than you do. ☺
What is a “no brainer” about a “minimum 5 servings of fruits and vegetables a day”? I’m in my upper 60s, been largely veggie and fruit free for my entire life…and am uncommonly healthy for my age. I have no objections to someone eating vegan or eating lots of veggies, but there is no need for a “minimum” of vegetables! Lots of “carnivores” – and I’m not one – prove it daily.
what are you doing for vitamins?
what is your cholestoral?
resting HR?
exercise level
what is you BP?
I suspect you are not as healthy as you think you are
You might want to review scientific research before concluding it is unhealthy.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8684475/
Do you really want me commenting on the validity / robustness of a “Respondent’s Survey”. No controls, No medical examination, Strictly a survery based on respondent’s self evaluation.
Junk Science is junk science – whether its climate science, covid science, masking science or “food science”
I dont know who gave the down vote, though there is no question that cited survery pretending to be a valid study is junk science.
Let me add one additional comment on the junk science survey.
Leftist regularly embrace studies that are obvious junk science studies. There is no excuse for an educated conservative to get fooled.
Another down vote
Everyone here is familiar with the junk science studies that claim the regret rate for transgender mutilations is less than 2% . (transgender mutilations such as males cutting off the member so they can live as if female). Those “peer reviewed” studies promoting transgender treatment use extremely flawed methodology. Pure junk Science.
That study – uses very similar flawed methodology. Again, there is no reason an educated conservative should get fooled.
There is no known disease that is associated with cholesterol. In fact, if you eat a low fat diet you are injuring your system. The desired influence of diet is to eat less carbs and keep weight under control. Exercise.
Human digestion is optimized for fats. Why else would one of the main functions of the largest organ in the human body, the liver, be to secrete the bile that assists in fat processing?
Our hormones, nerve tissue, and brains are predominantly composed of fats. Long-term lack of fat in the diet disrupts hormonal balance, degrades the nervous system, and worsens or accelerates the onset of mental health problems.
Cholesterol is the repair material the body uses to plug the microscopic holes in blood vessels caused by inflammation. Inflammation largely caused by excessive blood glucose. Arteriosclerosis sets in when there starts to be too much repair material in proportion to original tissue. Cholesterol gets unfairly blamed for a problem caused by something else that it’s trying to fix.
Carnivorous predators have no problem getting vitamins because a) they don’t cook the meat they eat, and b) they eat some offal (organs) at the same time.
Water-soluble nutrients are reduced or removed in fully cooked meats, and offal is an acquired taste for most people.
No real need for fruit—unless your on a ship in the 1700s. If you have a blood sugar problem, fruit is outright bad for you.
Putting fruit on an equal footing with veggies has always seemed odd to me.
Yea, these masterminds are trying to get ahead of things before somebody comes in with a 2×4 upside the head.
5 servings of fruits and vegetables a day … LOL. MINIMUM!! ROFLMAO!!
The best weight loss diet in the world is simply counting your calories and doing enough exercise to burn off whatever excess you are eating.
Fruits are full of sugar, BTW. I have no problem with sugar – I love it – but it’s funny how people think all that sugar is healthy so long as it’s wrapped in a fruit.
You get almost as much Vit. C from a bottle of Mountain Dew as you would from a small glass of orange juice. Orange juice is one of Mountain Dew’s main ingredients after the water and corn syrup.
The “low fat” craze of the 70’s forever changed the US and “diets” for the worse, as well as HFCS in everything.
I know a great deal about this one. The war on dietary fat started after Eisenhower had a heart attack on the golf course in 1955. The academic “experts” declared that saturated fat in dairy and beef caused high cholesterol, which caused arterial sclerosis (hardening of the arteries), which caused heart attacks. Over time, people were advised not to eat eggs and red meat.
In the late 1950s, diabetes afflicted 0.9% of the population. In the early 1960s, 14% of the population was obese, and 1% were “morbidly obese.” By the mid-1970s, the government had hopped onto the train, and leaned on the food companies to reduce fat in their processed foods. That was the start of “fat free” and “low fat” foods.
Now, food is comprised of fat, protein, and carbohydrates. There are limits to which protein can be increased, because too much of it well-known to cause serious digestive problems. So the Evil Saturated Fats were replaced by carbohydrates in processed food.
Two things to say. One is that saturated fats produce a feeling of satiety, i.e., fullness, while carbohydrates produce much less of it, and in fact produce a craving for more carbs. Secondly, carbs metabolize into glucose, which causes a spike in insulin levels, which in many people (especially the obese) produces Type 2 diabetes. Since the late ’50s and early ’60s, and especially after the mid-’70s, diabetes has risen eight-fold to 7.5% by 2015. Obesity is now 42% of the population, and “morbid obesity” is 10%.
The big rebel was Atkins, whose “New Diet Revolution” exposed all of it. The “experts” relentless attacked him while sticking to their war on saturated fat. All while diabetes and obesity continued to explode. And the war on beef, in particular, expanded to depict beef as a driver of global warming. This continues today, in spite of solid evidence to the contrary.
Now we have the latest federal food guidelines, which are ridiculously complicated and still attack dietary fat, while nodding toward “safe” fats like olive oil (which, by the way, undergoes denaturing if used for cooking and is actually more harmful than canola oil) nuts, and “legumes,” i.e. lentils and beans. Anything but beef.
Top it off with the recent introduction of semaglutide, i.e., Ozempic and Wegovy, which — ta da! — produce satiety, along with a long list of harmful side effects. Not to mention that the stuff is obscenely expensive. So there you have it: Our “experts” create a huge problem, then purport to “solve” it with these drugs.
That, friends, is the briefest I could make it while telling the whole story. The link between saturated fat, cholesterol, arterial sclerosis, and heart attacks have largely been disproven by research, which still goes ignored by the “experts.”
There is yet more to say, but this is a comment section, and I have already written too much. It’s not the chemicals in the food. It’s not corn sugar, i.e., high fructose corn syrup, that produces obesity and diabetes. Obesity is a calorie game, and a metabolism game, the latter being the fact that, as people get older, they need fewer calories because metabolism declines with age.
For a brief, well-researched, conversational treatment of all this stuff, a friend of mine has written a very good book that goes for $5 on Kindle and $10 in paperback. Forget about the “experts” and the Weight Loss Inc., and get the guy’s book. I helped with the fact checking and the editing.
https://www.amazon.com/One-Potato-Chip-Time-Honest-ebook/dp/B0CW18VQDG
fwiw – I am a semi endurance athlete (age 60+).
There was a commonly held belief that endurrance athletes need to “carb up” prior to a long run, marathon, bike race, etc. The body can store approx 1800 calories in the blood in the form of carbs.
The current thinking is to load up on protein and fat prior to a long endurance event since the body can store 3,000-4000 calories in the blood in the form of protein and fat.
I say that with the caveat that I dont understand the science sufficiently to make a comment with any level of full knowledge.
I’m not talking about athletes, “semi endurance” or otherwise. Or marathons, bike races, or anything like that. I am talking about daily life for ordinary people.
I very rarely post a comment anywhere like above. The reason: someone will always barge in with something irrelevant, off-topic, or just crazy. If it’s not some athletic junk, it’ll be a middle-aged woman who’s 40 pounds overweight and wants to blame it on menopause, chemicals, processed foods, a unique metabolism, or excess grocery profits.
Anything but the fork. Oh God, not the fork!
Yep. For the overwhelming majority of those people who are overweight or obese the blame is lack of self discipline to eat healthier options and no or too little exercise. Enter a calorie deficit and lose weight. Do that by restricting intake of calories and increasing the expenditure of calories through exercise.
Metabolic syndrome is a real thing. “Calories in/ calories out” is an overly simplistic model that is not really helpful, especially for those with metabolic syndrome.
Stop lying. Metabolic syndrome does NOT obviate calories in/calories out.
WTF are you talking about? “Calories in/Calories out” recognizes the the laws of physics. If you burn more calories than you take in then you HAVE TO lose weight. Period.
What’s “not helpful” about this is that too many people don’t want to cut down their calories/eating and don’t feel like doing any exercise. But they love to complain about how they can’t lose weight (“because of their metabolism” – LOL) and how counting calories and exercise is meaningless.
Leslie, thanks for all the effort putting this article together but I’m not going to read it. No offense, however.
Reason being is that the government has utterly, completely and irredeemably squandered any and all – down to subatomic levels that will not be discovered for millennia – legitimacy. They’re lying liars who lie.
They can go straight to ____; I will have a Twinkie washed down with a martini, thank you.
Just a Twinkie? What kind of craziness is that? You skipped right past the Doritos! Balance is the key to healthfulness.
Twinkies are useless unless they are deep fried. Everyone knows that. And corn dogs!
I think in honor of those sex worker college classes you should switch from Twinkies to Ho-Hos.
Now they can say “we did it – not JFK”! The left is terrified of what is going to be exposed! And they KNOW that once Mcd’s and others revert back to beef tallow and those fries taste SO MUCH BETTER, votes will be lost!
As far as that Healthy Label? Just use a picture of PRESIDENT TRUMP giving one of his famous “thumbs up”!!
lol- that fat slob clearly hasn’t eaten a healthy meal in years.His mental decline is staggering.
Yea his mental decline…..
I bet you voted for Biden, who
Is perfectly lucid, right?
“His mental decline is staggering.”
Says the Johnny bot who voted for the empty suit known as Biden.
You really aren’t very good at this troll business, are you.
I’d be a very happy camper if they brought back beef tallow.
Beef tallow is ridiculously expensive … yet, butchers continue to throw away tons of fat every day. I used to pick up fat from my butcher, free, to make soap. He was happy to get rid of it.
If you like tallow and lard, just save the grease when you fry burgers and bacon.
Duck fat is supposed to make great fries. Haven’t tried it myself, though.
They took it out because of people that wouldn’t eat at McDonald’s in the first place, complained about it.
They are continuing to screw things up, obsessing over “saturated fat” (which is good for you unless you combine it with tons of carbs) and trying to restrict eating meat. What SHOULD we be eating? Maybe look at how we ate in the 1930s – 1960s, before government started screwing everything up!
Not that I have any personal experience with them, but my understanding is that McDonald’s fries taste exactly the same as when they were fried in tallow, because the vegetable oil they switched to is flavored with a tallow extract. That’s why McDonalds never advertised its fries as suitable for vegetarians. (The lawsuit ~20 years ago was frivolous, but McD chose to settle it for nuisance money rather than fight.)
I see a lack of B vitamins that were added to white bread by law- lack of red meat, etc. Lots and lots of daily beans to make up for vitamins B would be … interesting.
The problem with food guidelines is that there is a large amount of individual variability in human beings.
Red meat is great for vitamin B-12 (which doesn’t exist in plants), but not great for people who are subject to uric acid kidney stones.
An all-meat diet may be great for Jordan Peterson, but not for most others.
Perhaps pay attention to what your body, rather than a government bureaucracy, is telling you.
Yep. As Thomas Sowell told us ‘there are no solutions only trade-offs’.
If RFK is serious, he will have the FDA reclassify supplements that provide more than the RDA for any nutrient as drugs rather than foods no matter the dose or quality. Currently, they are classified as foods and as such receive little to no oversight.
And where, exactly, does the RDA come from?
Asking for a friend…
If the government truly believed in diversity, the guidelines would simply say “we’re all different. Discover which foods and eating schedules work best for you. Peace out.”
Take a look at our health profiles right now. People largely ignore FDA guidelines anyways.
Do you really trust them to “discover which foods and eating schedules work best” for them? That sounds like some nonsense straight out of the body positive movement.
The federal food pyramid is a joke. Way too complicated, and still too carb-heavy. The feds are very much to blame for the explosion in diabetes and obesity in the last 50 to 60 years. My long post elsewhere in this thread goes into the details about that.
When I was a kid there were no fat kids in school or in the neighborhood. There were no microwaves either. Moms cooked dinner.
Kids ran around and played outside instead of looking at their smartphones on the sofa, and most dads were heading out after breakfast to do heavy labor instead of sedentary office jobs. They used up the calories those three square meals a day provided.
There were fat kids in my schools in the 1`960s and ’70s, but not very many.
All things in moderation and you won’t be a fat fu.ck.
Including moderation. 😉
An ongoing quibble with the language: foods are incapable of being sick, so they cannot be healthy.
People can be healthy or unhealthy, and their choices can lead to being more healthy or unhealthy, but the choices themselves can’t be in any state of health at all..
And sadly, there is so much money to be made in pretending food or supplements are medicine or anti-medicine (Saturated fats will give you heart attacks!! Vitamin XYZ will make you resist cancer!) that there isn’t much hope in America ever having rational conversations about diet and health.
The proper word is healthful, but you won’t see anybody using it.
If you need those idiots of the government to tell you what’s healthy and what’s not, you really have bigger problems
My point being only PEOPLE can be healthy or unhealthy. Inanimate objects like donuts and bananas cannot.
Language matters, it is why there are “transwomen” winning awards and competitions.
The FDA has no business trying to label any foods as “healthy”. That is not the concern of the FDA. Safe for consumption or unsafe. That’s about it.
When the government certifies things, like “organic” foods, how many people grow their food in a sustainable way, don’t use pesticides, use only naturally occurring fertilizers, but then spend $gazillions to be able to carry that “organic” certification.
I envision a government dollar grab when “healthy” labeling is no longer voluntary for any food manufacturers, large or small. Aren’t the Amish right now concerned that the food police is coming, unasked, onto their farms and destroying their products because they didn’t conform to the government’s rules? This will become an entire new tax burden for Americans.
I would much rather see the FDA and other concerned 3 letter agencies write white papers discussing what is sold in America is banned in other first world countries. Why other countries won’t allow some food to be imported, but is sold in the US.
All I can say is thata my first thought when I saw the center plate in the lead photo was “bacon-wrapped lobster tails.”
What we need is simple rules not food lists. Any identifiable food that does not need an ingredient list is presumptively healthy. If the ingredient list is exclusively food it is probably healthy.
People who are metabolically unhealthy need to make further adjustments to their diet. Most of us are metabolically unhealthy in part from eating bad food. Adjustments would include limiting refined carbs and added sugars and increasing fiber.
I consider listening to experts to be in bad taste.