Dr. Marion Nestle, longtime NYU professor of nutrition, food studies, and public health, with additional faculty roles at UC San Francisco and Cornell, is best known for analyzing the intersections of food, politics, and health, often exposing how government policy, corporate lobbying, and food industry marketing shape what we eat.
Dietary guidelines: AHA v. MAHA
The American Heart Association has just published its updated dietary guidelines: The 2026 Dietary Guidance to Improve Cardiovascular Health: A Scientific Statement From the American Heart Association [the press release is here].
These constitute a firm rebuttal to the MAHA (Make America Healthy Again) guidelines issued in January.
The AHA’s clear and straightforward messages are beautifully illustrated:
The AHA messages particularly differ from the MAHA messages:
- Protein: Plant rather than animal sources
- Meat: Lean cuts, avoid processed, limit portions
- Dairy: Low-fat or fat-free rather than full-fat
- Fats: Unsaturated rather than saturated; nontropical oils rather than animal fats and tropical oils
The Wall Street Journal summarized the differences in its headline: Heart Association clashes with RFK, Jr over red meat, dairy, and beef tallow.
The recommendations, released Tuesday by the association, contrast with dietary guidelines that the Trump administration introduced earlier this year. The differences add to disagreements between the federal government and mainstream medical groups on medicine and nutrition advice, after the Health and Human Services Department under Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., for instance, sought to dial back vaccine recommendations and President Trump told pregnant women to minimize Tylenol use.
In response, senior food advisor to RFK, Jr, Calley Means, posted:
I suppose clashing is a matter of perception, but the differences are real.
Earlier, Calley Means had posted a more gracious response:
Wow! Applause to the American Heart Association. Let’s hope its graphic replaces the meat-heavy inverted pyramid and ends up in all the textbooks.
One last point: This is dietary advice for heart disease prevention, but it works for everything else too—obesity, other major chronic diseases, overall longevity, and while it’s at it, planetary as well as human health.
The post Dietary guidelines: AHA v. MAHA appeared first on Food Politics by Marion Nestle.
Marion Nestle is Paulette Goddard Professor of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health, Emerita, at New York University, which she chaired from 1988-2003 and from which she officially retired in September 2017. She is also Visiting Professor of Nutritional Sciences at Cornell. She earned a Ph.D. in molecular biology and an M.P.H. in public health nutrition from the University of California, Berkeley, and has been awarded honorary degrees from Transylvania University in Kentucky (2012) and from the City University of New York’s Macaulay Honors College (2016). In 2023, she was awarded The Edinburgh Medal (for science and society).
