\u201cCardiovascular disease starts early,\u201d said Gardner, who served on a committee tasked with helping the government develop the 2025 dietary guidelines, which are updated every five years by the departments of health and agriculture. Because which foods show up on kids\u2019 cafeteria trays are shaped by the guidelines, he worries about the prospect of kids eating cheesier, more pepperoni-laden pizzas along with more hot dogs and processed meats. \u201cThose plaques build early in your arteries, and they only manifest decades later when you have a heart attack.\u201d<\/p>\n
Along with school lunches, the guidelines inform a range of federally funded initiatives, from what products can be purchased by low-income parents participating in the Women, Infants, and Children supplemental nutrition program (WIC) to the foods recommended to the U.S. military<\/a>. Most Americans don\u2019t strictly observe the guidelines in their daily lives \u2014 less than 10% follow them to the letter<\/a>, consuming more sugar, alcohol, and butter than the government suggests. But doctors, nurses, and dietitians refer to the guidelines when advising their patients, and some nutrition apps use them to rate the healthfulness of different foods.\u00a0<\/p>\n Saturated fat is far from the first issue over which the Make America Healthy Again movement is breaking from scientific consensus. (See also: vaccines<\/a>, raw milk<\/a>, Tylenol<\/a>.) And there are legitimate debates in the nutrition field over the health effects of saturated fat in whole-fat dairy<\/a> in particular. \u201cSecretary Kennedy is committed to new dietary recommendations that are rooted in rigorous science,\u201d said a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services.<\/p>\n \t\t\tMAHA But Gardner and other nutrition experts who spoke with STAT fear the implications of jettisoning 75 years\u2019 worth of data that show saturated fat raises LDL cholesterol \u2014 the \u201cbad\u201d kind linked with higher risks of strokes and heart disease.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s really an insult to science, everything I\u2019ve been trained on \u2014 evidence-based medicine,\u201d said Gardner, who was one of two leads on the committee charged with delving into the data on saturated fat. The 20-member dietary guidelines committee met twice a week for two years to review reams of nutrition papers, and turned in a 400-page report with a thousand-page supplement supporting their recommendations. He fears the Trump administration is ready to toss all that careful research aside without providing equally strong data. \u201cI think that\u2019s almost as dangerous as the health implications of saturated fat.\u201d<\/p>\n The latest science on saturated fats in meat and dairy<\/p>\n In MAHA\u2019s telling, saturated fat is an innocent nutrient smeared by weak evidence and conflicts of interest on dietary guidelines committees. Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Marty Makary summarized the MAHA point of view when he said last month<\/a> that the new guidelines were \u201cending the 50-year war on natural saturated fat\u201d waged by \u201cmedical dogma,\u201d while Kennedy said in the spring<\/a> that the 2025 committee\u2019s report \u201clooks like it was written by the food processing industry.\u201d<\/p>\n \t\t\t \t\t\t\t \u201cAnybody who has the stature and the background to be on this committee at some point in their life took money from someone that you could\u201d attack, Gardner said. \u201cMine was Beyond Meat,\u201d the plant-based meat substitute maker that funded<\/a> one of his studies \u2014 a connection MAHA leaders like Calley Means have used to try to discredit<\/a> the committee\u2019s recommendations on saturated fat. (That said, concerns about conflicts of interest among committee members flow from all corners: The consumer advocacy group Center for Science in the Public Interest expressed unease when members of the 2025 committee disclosed<\/a> past financial relationships<\/a> with beef and dairy trade associations.)<\/p>\n Many MAHA acolytes share the belief that saturated fats like butter, lard, and beef tallow are healthier, less processed alternatives to plant-based seed oils<\/a>, a category that encompasses canola, corn, and soybean oils, and which they say cause inflammation associated with a number of chronic diseases. A large body of research, however, supports<\/a> eschewing butter in favor of polyunsaturated fats from plant oils, including seed oils, as a way to lower the risk of cardiovascular disease and premature death.\u00a0<\/p>\n The MAHA movement also embraces red meat, which tends to be higher in saturated fat, as part of a protein-fueled, carnivore-friendly diet. (Kennedy\u2019s diet currently consists exclusively of \u201cmeat and fermented vegetables,\u201d his wife Cheryl Hines said on a recent podcast<\/a>, noting that he\u2019s often up cooking steak at 6:30 a.m.) Much of the MAHA rhetoric around saturated fat in meat links it to humankind\u2019s ancestral roots. \u201cHow could an ancient food cause modern diseases?\u201d Nina Teicholz, head of the dietary advocacy group Nutrition Coalition and author of \u201cThe Big Fat Surprise: Why Butter, Meat and Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet,\u201d posted<\/a> on the social media platform X. Or as Means said on X<\/a>, \u201cHumans have consumed [meat] since the invention of humans.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \t\t\t \t\t\t\t\t\tWhy MAHA\u2019s push on Coca-Cola and ice cream is \u2018nutritionally hilarious\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n But while it\u2019s true that people have been eating meat for millennia, it\u2019s also true that the average life expectancy<\/a> in the Paleolithic era was 33, with diarrhea and infections more likely to take a person out than the cumulative cardiovascular effects of too much bison. More broadly, said Gardner, the advisory committee\u2019s review of research<\/a> found clear cardiovascular benefits to swapping out meat for protein sources like beans, peas, and lentils, which have little to no saturated fat and more fiber<\/a> and antioxidants.\u00a0<\/p>\n There are some open questions about red meat consumption. For example, the committee found few papers that compare the effects of fatty red meats versus lean red meats, and the ones that did exist weren\u2019t that helpful from an American perspective. Two papers Gardner reviewed were about meat from highly prized goats in Spain \u2014 a far cry from American beef made from cows raised on industrial farms.\u00a0<\/p>\n The picture is more complicated when it comes to whole-fat dairy<\/a>, like milk, cheese, and yogurt, compared to low-fat and fat-free options. \u201cI would say that the whole milk issue is probably the most contentious topic in the saturated fat conversation,\u201d said Caitlin Dow, senior nutrition scientist at the Center for Science in the Public Interest.\u00a0<\/p>\n Kennedy has called the dietary guidelines\u2019 recommendations for low-fat or fat-free milk over whole milk \u201cantiquated<\/a>.\u201d This view is shared by some well-established nutrition experts, most prominently cardiologist Dariush Mozaffarian, director of the Tufts Food is Medicine Institute. Mozaffarian says research<\/a> shows there\u2019s not much difference between full-fat or low-fat dairy when it comes to cardiovascular disease and obesity rates. The proportions of fatty acids that make up the saturated fat in dairy differ from the saturated fat in animal sources, which could be part of the explanation for disparate health effects.\u00a0<\/p>\n Dow, however, said there still aren\u2019t enough trials that have directly compared the effects of high-fat versus low-fat dairy \u2014 a position shared by the advisory committee, which found<\/a> there wasn\u2019t yet enough evidence to draw a conclusion on that front. \u201cI think we hedge our bets now, because we know that saturated fat collectively is so harmful,\u201d Dow said, while leaving open the possibility that guidance on dairy could change in the future.\u00a0<\/p>\n Why MAHA supports saturated fat<\/p>\n Alice Lichtenstein, a nutrition scientist at Tufts University, served on the 2015 dietary guidelines advisory committee and on the committee that developed the most recent guidelines from the American Heart Association. She said there\u2019s room to criticize the current advice to cap saturated fats at 10% of daily calories. What really matters when it comes to heart health, she said, is \u201cthe relative amount of unsaturated fat to saturated fat.\u201d Just as eating more saturated fat overall raises LDL cholesterol, eating unsaturated fat lowers LDL cholesterol and the associated risks<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not that you should be eating a low-fat diet,\u201d Lichtenstein said. In fact, people who eat diets that are low in fat and high in carbohydrates run the risk of increasing their triglyceride levels, which are themselves a risk factor for cardiovascular disease.\u00a0<\/p>\n \t\t\t \t\t\t\t The upshot is that both the MAHA movement and nutrition scientists agree that fat is a necessary part<\/a> of a healthy diet. The difference is that most nutrition experts say data simply doesn\u2019t support the idea that fat from animal sources is preferable to fat from plants. They\u2019re also concerned about the possibility that guidelines encouraging Americans to eat more saturated fat could lead people to eat less of other important food groups, like fruits and vegetables.\u00a0<\/p>\n But as Dow noted, MAHA loves a contrarian narrative. And the idea that tucking into a plate of bacon fried in butter every morning might be good for you also taps into the same nostalgia for America\u2019s farmland past that\u2019s given rise to TikTok \u201ctradwives\u201d<\/a> \u2014 a simpler lifestyle of eating freshly butchered meat and drinking milk straight from the barn.\u00a0<\/p>\n The truth, however, is that Americans were never all that healthy<\/a> in the first place.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWhen people were eating a lot of butter and these foods, heart disease rates were still high,\u201d said Andrea Glenn, an assistant professor of nutrition and food studies at New York University. \u201cWe should be eating more whole foods, but there\u2019s nuance to the types of whole foods you should be eating.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n To Gardner, the prospect of guidelines that lead American kids to eat more saturated fat feels like a personal affront. His own father died after his 10th cardiovascular procedure, including two bypasses. \u201cHe was a stodgy old New England lawyer who said, \u2018I really like my steak with my butter and my salt, and that\u2019s how I was raised,\u2019\u201d Gardner said. The habits that children develop while they\u2019re young<\/a>, he knows, can last a lifetime.<\/p>\n STAT\u2019s coverage of chronic health issues is supported by a grant from Bloomberg Philanthropies<\/a>. Our financial supporters<\/a> are not involved in any decisions about our journalism.<\/p>\n
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