Confused by the new dietary guidelines? Focus on these simple, evidence-based shifts to lower your chronic disease risk

The Dietary Guidelines for Americans aim to translate the most up-to-date nutrition science into practical advice for the public as well as to guide federal policy for programs such as school lunches.

But the newest version of the guidelines, released on Jan. 7, 2026, seems to be spurring more confusion than clarity about what people should be eating.

I’ve been studying nutrition and chronic disease for over 35 years, and in 2020 I wrote “Sugarproof,” a book about reducing consumption of added sugars to improve health. I served as a scientific adviser for the new guidelines.

I chose to participate in this process, despite its accelerated and sometimes controversial nature, for two reasons. First, I wanted to help ensure the review was conducted with scientific rigor. And second, federal health officials prioritized examining areas where the evidence has become especially strong – particularly food processing, added sugars and sugary beverages, which closely aligns with my research.

My role, along with colleagues, was to review and synthesize that evidence and help clarify where the science is strongest and most consistent.

What’s different in the new dietary guidelines?

The dietary guidelines, first published in 1980, are updated every five years. The newest version differs from the previous versions in a few key ways.

For one thing, the new report is shorter, at nine pages rather than 400. It offers simpler advice directly to the public, whereas previous guidelines were more directed at policymakers and nutrition experts.

Also, the new guidelines reflect an important paradigm shift in defining a healthy diet. For the past half-century, dietary advice has been shaped by a focus on general dietary patterns and targets for individual nutrients, such as protein, fat and carbohydrate. The new guidelines instead emphasize overall diet quality.

Some health and nutrition experts have criticized specific aspects of the guidelines, such as how the current administration developed them, or how they address saturated fat, beef, dairy, protein and alcohol intake. These points have dominated the public discourse. But while some of them are valid, they risk overshadowing the strongest, least controversial and most actionable conclusions from the scientific evidence.

What we found in our scientific assessment was that just a few straightforward changes to your diet – specifically, reducing highly processed foods and sugary drinks, and increasing whole grains – can meaningfully improve your health.

What the evidence actually shows

My research assistants and I evaluated the conclusions of studies on consuming sugar, highly processed foods and whole grains, and assessed how well they were conducted and how likely they were to be biased. We graded the overall quality of the findings as low, moderate or high based on standardized criteria such as their consistency and plausibility.

We found moderate to high quality evidence that people who eat higher amounts of processed foods have a higher risk of developing Type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, dementia and death from any cause.

Similarly, we found moderately solid evidence that people who drink more sugar-sweetened beverages have a higher risk of obesity and Type 2 diabetes, as well as quite conclusive evidence that children who drink fruit juice have a higher risk of obesity. And consuming more beverages containing artificial sweeteners raises the risk of death from any cause and Alzheimer’s disease, based on moderately good evidence.

Whole grains, on the other hand, have a protective effect on health. We found high-quality evidence that people who eat more whole grains have a lower risk of cardiovascular disease and death from any cause. People who consume more dietary fiber, which is abundant in whole grains, have a lower risk of Type 2 diabetes and death from any cause, based on moderate-quality research.

According to the research we evaluated, it’s these aspects – too much highly processed foods and sweetened beverages, and too little whole grain foods – that are significantly contributing to the epidemic of chronic diseases such as obesity, Type 2 diabetes and heart disease in this country – and not protein, beef or dairy intake.

From scientific evidence to guidelines

Our report was the first one to recommend that the guidelines explicitly mention decreasing consumption of highly processed foods. Overall, though, research on the negative health effects of sugar and processed foods and the beneficial effects of whole grains has been building for many years and has been noted in previous reports.

On the other hand, research on how strongly protein, red meat, saturated fat and dairy are linked with chronic disease risk is much less conclusive. Yet the 2025 guidelines encourage increasing consumption of those foods – a change from previous versions.

The inverted pyramid imagery used to represent the 2025 guidelines also emphasizes protein – specifically, meat and dairy – by putting these foods in a highly prominent spot in the top left corner of the image. Whole grains sit at the very bottom; and except for milk, beverages are not represented.

Scientific advisers were not involved in designing the image.

Making small changes that can improve your health

An important point we encountered repeatedly in reviewing the research was that even small dietary changes could meaningfully lower people’s chronic disease risks.

For example, consuming just 10% fewer calories per day from highly processed foods could lower the risk of diabetes by 14%, according to one of the lead studies we relied on for the evidence review. Another study showed that eating one less serving of highly processed foods per day lowers the risk of heart disease by 4%.

You can achieve that simply by switching from a highly processed packaged bread to one with fewer ingredients or replacing one fast-food meal per week with a simple home-cooked meal. Or, switch your preferred brands of daily staples such as tomato sauce, yogurt, salad dressing, crackers and nut butter to ones that have fewer ingredients like added sugars, sweeteners, emulsifiers and preservatives.

Cutting down on sugary beverages – for example, soda, sweet teas, juices and energy drinks – had an equally dramatic effect. Simply drinking the equivalent of one can less per day lowers the risk of diabetes by 26% and the risk of heart disease by 14%.

And eating just one additional serving of whole grains per day – say, replacing packaged bread with whole grain bread – results in an 18% lower risk of diabetes and a 13% lower risk of death from all causes combined.

How to adopt ‘kitchen processing’

Another way to make these improvements is to take basic elements of food processing back from manufacturers and return them to your own kitchen – what I call “kitchen processing.” Humans have always processed food by chopping, cooking, fermenting, drying or freezing. The problem with highly processed foods isn’t just the industrial processing that transforms the chemical structure of natural ingredients, but also what chemicals are added to improve taste and shelf life.

Kitchen processing, though, can instead be optimized for health and for your household’s flavor preferences – and you can easily do it without cooking from scratch. Here are some simple examples:

• Instead of flavored yogurts, buy plain yogurt and add your favorite fruit or some homemade simple fruit compote.

• Instead of sugary or diet beverages, use a squeeze of citrus or even a splash of juice to flavor plain sparkling water.

• Start with a plain whole grain breakfast cereal and add your own favorite source of fiber and/or fruit.

• Instead of packaged “energy bars” make your own preferred mixture of nuts, seeds and dried fruit.

• Instead of bottled salad dressing, make a simple one at home with olive oil, vinegar or lemon juice, a dab of mustard and other flavorings of choice, such as garlic, herbs, or honey.

You can adapt this way of thinking to the foods you eat most often by making similar types of swaps. They may seem small, but they will build over time and have an outsized effect on your health.