Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. announced on Thursday that new federal dietary guidelines will be released next month.
“We’re about to release dietary guidelines that are going to change the food culture in this country,” Kennedy said. “They’re going to change the kind of food the military gets. They’re going to change the kind of food that our children get.”
Kennedy’s announcement came during President Donald Trump’s press conference in the Oval Center centered around the federal government’s agreement with drug manufacturing companies Eli Lily and company and Novo Nordisk to drastically reduce the price of prescription weight loss drugs on TrumpRx, a government-run drug prescription market.
In the past, Kennedy has been highly critical of weight loss drugs like Ozempic because he claims it fails to treat the root cause of obesity, which he suggests is people’s diets and lack of exercise. He was opposed to Medicaid or Medicaid coverage of weight-loss drugs. However, Kennedy has changed his attitude toward prescription weight loss drugs, but still contends its not “a silver bullet.”
It is uncertain what a revamp of the federal dietary guidelines will entail. The National News Desk reached out to HHS for further comment.
Since 2011, the Department of Agriculture has touted the MyPlate as the official standard for how many of each food group should be included in American’s meals. MyPlate replaced the Food Guide Pyramid first unveiled in 1992. Every five years, USDA and HHS meet to make. updates and changes to the federal government’s dietary guidelines. The two agencies last made updates earlier this year.
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Kennedy’s upcoming revamp of the dietary restrictions falls in line with his Make America Healthy Again movement. Kennedy pledged that the increasing affordability of weight loss drugs combined with dietary standards and physical activity standards, the country will see a combined weight loss of 125 million pounds.