In a heated season for American health policy, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. finds himself at the center of a fierce debate over the nation’s dietary guidelines and the broader direction of public health. At a Senate committee hearing on September 2, 2025, Kennedy faced a barrage of criticism from Democratic lawmakers, who branded him a "charlatan" and demanded his resignation. The scene marked the latest chapter in a growing campaign against Kennedy, including an open letter from nine former CDC leaders and another letter signed by 1,000 current and former HHS employees, both calling for his departure.
Yet, despite the uproar, Kennedy seems undeterred. He’s just begun rolling out the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) agenda—President Trump’s flagship health initiative—that, according to the latest Insider Advantage poll, enjoys the approval of 73% of Republicans and a notable share of independents. The program aims to tackle chronic disease, food safety, and vaccine skepticism, issues that have spilled over party lines in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and years of shifting health advice.
At the heart of the controversy is the question of what Americans should eat—and, more specifically, what kind of dairy belongs on the national menu. The Oversight Committee’s September 2 hearing, titled "Better Meals, Fewer Pills: Making Our Children Healthy Again," put the spotlight on child obesity, a crisis with nearly one in five American children now classified as obese. The MAHA agenda seeks to address such public health challenges by overhauling the country’s dietary guidelines, a move that has powerful commercial and ideological opponents on edge.
Back in December 2024, as President Biden’s term wound down, his administration rushed to publish the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2025-2030. These guidelines, which are supposed to reflect the latest science on diet and nutrition, included recommendations influenced by climate change concerns and a "health equity lens" that emphasized race and income. Critics, including Kennedy, argue that the guidelines were a last-ditch effort to tie the incoming administration to what they call "unhealthy, woke, industry-driven" dietary advice—especially recommendations to reduce meat consumption and promote seed oils.
The process behind these guidelines has drawn scrutiny. According to US Right To Know, a nonprofit public health research group, 13 out of 20 members of the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee (DGAC) had "high-risk, medium-risk or possible conflicts of interest" with food, pharmaceutical, or weight loss companies. A 2022 study published in the Journal of Public Health Nutrition found that 95% of DGAC members had ties to industry giants like Kellogg, Abbott, Kraft, Mead Johnson, and General Mills. The study’s authors wrote, "Trustworthy dietary guidelines result from a transparent, objective, and science-based process. Our analysis has shown that the significant and widespread [conflicts of interest] on the committee prevent the DGA from achieving the recommended standard for transparency without mechanisms in place to make this information publicly available."
Insiders close to the MAHA initiative claim the committee has been compromised by both industry interests and what they call "woke ideology." They argue that the guidelines’ emphasis on plant-based diets and seed oils reflects lobbying by food processing companies rather than unbiased science. Kennedy himself has said the Biden dietary guidelines report "looks like it was written by the food processing industry."
In March 2025, the newly formed MAHA Commission held its first closed-door meeting and resolved to overhaul the 2025-2030 dietary guidelines. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins declared after the meeting, "We will make certain the 2025-2030 Guidelines are based on sound science, not political science. Gone are the days where leftist ideologies guide public policy." The commission’s agenda is clear: shift recommendations toward natural animal fats, full-fat dairy, and raw milk, and away from seed oils, ultra-processed foods, and synthetic additives and dyes.
As the Trump administration prepares to unveil its new guidelines later this month, the debate over dairy is taking center stage. For decades, Americans have been told to choose fat-free or low-fat dairy options, largely out of concern for saturated fat intake and heart disease risk. However, according to NPR, new research is challenging that orthodoxy. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has promised to end the "attack on whole milk, cheese and yogurt" and give these foods new prominence in the forthcoming guidelines.
Richard Bruno, a professor of human nutrition at Ohio State University, told NPR that the evidence linking saturated fat from dairy to heart disease is not as clear-cut as once thought. "There's been a lot of controversy," Bruno said. "The saturated fat from dairy foods doesn't seem to be behaving the way we think it should behave, based on the historical evidence that saturated fat is linked to heart disease."
Benoît Lamarche, director of the Nutrition, Health and Society Center in Quebec, led a review of the evidence last year and concluded, "The evidence is showing that they have the same effect and the evidence is of low quality and there's just a few studies that have looked at that." He added, "We don't have the strict and rigorous evidence opposing the two types of dairy and their effect on health. We need to stop distracting people with this recommendation."
Some recent studies cited by NPR have even suggested that higher-fat dairy could be neutral or beneficial when part of a healthy eating pattern. For example, a small trial showed that participants following the DASH diet with high-fat dairy had comparable improvements in blood pressure to those eating low-fat dairy, and better blood lipid levels. Another European study found that drinking whole milk actually outperformed skim milk in raising HDL, or "good," cholesterol. Bruno hypothesized that certain bioactive components in the milk fat membrane, like phospholipids, "alleviate any putative risks that would be associated with that higher intake of saturated fat."
However, the story isn’t so simple for all dairy products. Butter, for instance, still shows negative effects on cholesterol, unlike cheese or yogurt, which come with beneficial nutrients like calcium and protein. Observational studies have linked cheese consumption to lower stroke risk and yogurt to the prevention of Type 2 diabetes, leading the FDA to issue health claims on yogurt. Still, experts like Frank Hu, chair of nutrition at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, caution that there’s insufficient evidence to promote full-fat dairy as superior to low-fat options. Hu points out that the bigger issue is the context in which Americans consume dairy—often as part of pizza, burgers, and processed foods high in sodium and refined starch.
Despite these nuances, the 2025 Dietary Guidelines Scientific Advisory Committee ultimately maintained its recommendation for low-fat dairy, citing insufficient evidence to favor one over the other. Yet, Kennedy has signaled he may override this advice, reflecting his broader skepticism toward the committee’s work and its alleged industry ties.
The battle over America’s diet is more than a scientific squabble; it’s a political showdown with deep roots in the nation’s culture wars. Democrats accuse Kennedy of undermining vaccine confidence and public health, while some establishment Republicans worry his iconoclastic positions could destabilize long-standing health norms. Senator Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) even blamed Kennedy for recent measles outbreaks, though others contest the claim and point to other causes, such as unvaccinated migrants.
As the new guidelines loom, the stakes are high for public health, industry profits, and the political fortunes of those involved. The coming months will reveal whether Kennedy’s agenda will reshape the American diet—or run aground in the crossfire of partisan and commercial interests.
For now, Americans are left to navigate a dizzying array of advice, with the promise of new rules just around the corner—and the hope that, this time, the science will lead the way.
