Latest news with #dietaryguidelines
Fox News
19-05-2025
- Health
- Fox News
Biden-era health officials quietly urged limiting adult alcohol intake as Trump takes reins for new guidance
America's dietary guidelines on alcohol consumption hang in the balance after months of controversy under the Biden administration involving a quiet push to enforce rules advising "the risk of dying from alcohol use begins at low levels of average use." After congressional subpoenas went unanswered under the Biden administration regarding a health panel's alleged "secretive process" examining the health effects of alcohol consumption, Trump officials are ready to release a comprehensive set of dietary guidelines, including alcohol consumption, by August, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy said at a House hearing Wednesday. Kennedy said his department will take a nearly 500-page document from the Biden era and whittle it down to four pages that are free of "industry" input. "We are about to reissue the dietary guidelines, and we're going to do it very quickly. We have until January … I think we'll have it done even before August," Kennedy said. "And we took the Biden guidelines, which were 453 pages long and were clearly written by industry that are incomprehensible, driven by the same industry capture and those kind of carnal impulses that put Froot Loops at the top of the food pyramid. And we are changing that. So we're going to have four-page dietary guidelines that tell people, essentially, eat whole food, eat the food that's good for you." The Departments of Agriculture and Health and Human Services release the Dietary Guidelines for Americans every five years, which also include a guide to drinking alcohol. In the first edition of the guide in 1980, health leaders advised that consuming one to two glasses of alcohol per day appears "to cause no harm in adults," before the 1990 edition advised that women should not drink more than one glass of alcohol per day and a two-glass cap for men, Fox News Digital found. The guidelines have remained unchanged since 1990 as they concern adult drinking, until a push to lower the recommended level of drinking in 2020, which was rejected by the first Trump administration and then subsequently amplified under the Biden administration. The guides have been previously developed through a multistep process, including a Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee of experts reviewing scientific research to help craft the rules. For the 2025 guidelines, Congress directed the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine to publish an independent study on the process to craft the official guide, while a second study conducted by a group focused on preventing underage drinking was commissioned. In 2020, the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee advised that the first Trump administration's USDA and HHS publish a guideline with stricter rules surrounding alcohol, specifically that both men and women should not have more than one drink per day. The Trump administration rejected the advice for the official dietary guide release that year, but the issue persisted. Sitting on the 2020 advisory committee under the Trump administration was a doctor named Timothy Naimi, who currently serves as the director of the University of Victoria's Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research. "During the last Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee (DGAC) process, the DGAC suggested reducing the level recommended for health from 2 drinks to 1 drink for men based on the best available evidence," Naimi told Fox News Digital in an emailed comment Thursday. He added that the federal government rejecting the committee's advice "is how the process works." "The scientists develop a background report and the federal agencies weigh various factors and write the actual guidelines which are based on a variety of considerations," he explained. "As you know, each round scientific conclusions or recommendations may or may not be adopted by the federal agencies." After the Trump administration rejected stricter guides on drinking, Naimi made a return to advising the U.S. government on drinking levels under the Biden administration. The Biden administration in 2022 tapped the health committee focused on underage drinking to craft a report related to adult drinking for the upcoming dietary guidelines. Naimi was on the panel, as well as a World Health Organization official, and experts on mental health, epidemiology and anesthesiology, the draft report shows. Called the Interagency Coordinating Committee on the Prevention of Underage Drinking, ICCPUD was founded in 2004 to "coordinate all federal agency activities related to the problem of underage drinking." Congress did not approve ICCPUD to conduct a study on adult drinking to help craft the nation's dietary standards, which led to outrage from lawmakers of both political parties, including the retired Democrat congresswoman who advocated for ICCPUD's creation. "As expressly stated in the STOP Act, ICCPUD's authority and oversight are specifically related to underage drinking priorities. ICCPUD was never intended to participate in activities related to adult alcohol consumption," former California Democrat Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard, who sponsored the Sober Truth on Preventing Underage Drinking (STOP) Act that formalized ICCPUD, wrote in a letter to HHS and USDA in August 2024. Republican Kentucky Rep. James Comer subpoenaed then-HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra and then-U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Thomas Vilsack in September 2024 for documents related to the development of the 2025 Dietary Guidelines for Americans and how the administration tapped ICCPUD to conduct research without congressional input. Days later, in October 2024, more than 100 members of Congress from both political parties wrote a letter to HHS and USDA demanding the suspension of the ICCPUD study until the congressionally approved National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM) study on alcohol consumption was published. "As you are aware, Congress appropriated $1.3 million to the USDA in the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2023 and directed the National Academies to assemble a committee of experts to review, evaluate and report on current scientific evidence related to alcohol consumption and specific health outcomes that would inform guidance in the 2025 Dietary Guidelines. Once the NASEM scientific study has concluded, Congress can provide input on the need for an additional study on adult alcohol consumption from ICCPUD or another entity within HHS," the large group of bipartisan lawmakers wrote at the time. The lawmakers continued that they were concerned that the ICCPUD panel was not "appropriately vetted for conflicts of interest," calling the panel's operations "secretive." "The secretive process at ICCPUD and the concept of original research on adult alcohol consumption by a committee tasked with preventing underage drinking, jeopardizes the credibility of ICCPUD and its ability to continue its primary role of helping the nation prevent underage drinking," they continued. Dueling draft studies were then released in the waning days of the Biden administration. ICCPUD found in its draft report that "the risk of dying from alcohol use begins at low levels of average use." The congressionally approved NASEM study, published in December 2024, meanwhile, found that "compared with never consuming alcohol, moderate alcohol consumption is associated with lower all-cause mortality." Naimi told Fox News Digital in an emailed comment Thursday that the ICCPUD study was "top shelf" when it came to the science behind it, adding that having multiple reports, such as both the NASEM and ICCPUD studies, examining the effects of alcohol is "good science." "The study used the best and standard epidemiological methods, and used the best meta-analyses of the relationship between alcohol and a range of conditions," he said. "Those studies were selected by a consensus process of external topic area experts based on having lots of scientific publications in any particular disease relevant to alcohol. Then those risks were applied to the latest mortality data from the US to establish the lifetime risk for men and women across all levels of consumption." "Consumption of 2 drinks per day for men does increase their risk of death, however. At that level, approximately in 25 persons (4%) of men would have an alcohol-caused death. It's important to inform the public about this sort of thing so folks can make informed decisions," Naimi added of the draft report's findings related to adult alcohol consumption. Biden administration Surgeon General Vivek Murthy additionally bolstered calls to limit alcohol in January when he warned that alcohol consumption is linked to cancer. "Alcohol is a well-established, preventable cause of cancer responsible for about 100,000 cases of cancer and 20,000 cancer deaths annually in the United States – greater than the 13,500 alcohol-associated traffic crash fatalities per year in the US – yet the majority of Americans are unaware of this risk," Murthy said in a January statement. The WHO, notably, released a statement in 2022, declaring that "no level of alcohol consumption is safe for our health." "The risks and harms associated with drinking alcohol have been systematically evaluated over the years and are well documented," the World Health Organization said in a press release. "The World Health Organization has now published a statement in The Lancet Public Health: when it comes to alcohol consumption, there is no safe amount that does not affect health." Comer released an April statement underscoring that the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, which he chairs, is still investigating the matter despite the Biden administration snubbing subpoenas for more details, and he additionally sent letters to Kennedy and USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins requesting they provide "documents and communications relevant to our investigation and a staff-level briefing on the status of the formation of alcohol recommendations for the 2025 Dietary Guidelines" from the Biden era. "As HHS works alongside USDA to finalize the 2025 Dietary Guidelines, it is imperative that Congress and the American people have the utmost confidence in the scientific support determining the Dietary Guidelines. The National Nutrition Monitoring Act requires the Dietary Guidelines to be 'based on the preponderance of the scientific and medical knowledge which is current at the time the report is prepared.' Therefore, we write to request that HHS provide the Committee with documents and communications relevant to our investigation and a staff-level briefing on the status of the formation of alcohol recommendations for the 2025 Dietary Guidelines," Comer wrote.
Daily Mail
14-05-2025
- Health
- Daily Mail
EXCLUSIVE New head of MAHA revealed as he lays bare radical plan to transform US health... and ban Covid shots
A newly appointed health advisor to the Trump-aligned Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) initiative has unveiled a bold plan to overhaul the nation's health. British cardiologist Dr Aseem Malhotra, a long-time ally of MAHA leaders like health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr and NIH head Dr Jay Bhattacharya, has joined the movement as Chief Medical Advisor. As a cardiologist and former advisor to the UK government, Dr Malhotra helped campaign for taxes on sugary drinks, worked to lower the amount of Brits taking statins unnecessarily and worked with government leaders to remove ultraprocessed foods from hospitals and schools. Dr Malhotra - who has also appeared on podcasts with Joe Rogan and Tucker Carlson - hopes to bring force some of those changes in the US now too. Speaking to ahead of the official announcement, Dr Malhotra outlined his top three priorities — revising national dietary guidelines, cracking down on ultraprocessed foods and pushing for a moratorium on mRNA Covid vaccines. 'We absolutely can make America healthy again in this electoral term,' Dr Malhotra said. 'I'm not here for political reasons. I'm here to reflect the evidence.' As MAHA's chief medical advisor, Dr Malhotra is not formally employed by the federal government, but he will serve as a leading voice of the movement, working closely with grassroots groups to advance its policy agenda. Dr Malhotra will also relocate from his home in the UK to Washington, D.C., to stay closely engaged with the HHS, FDA, and other key agencies Redefining the American Diet A central pillar of Dr Malhotra's agenda is updating the US Dietary Guidelines, which are due for revision later this year. Currently, the guidelines advise that 45–65 percent of a person's daily calories come from carbohydrates. But Dr Malhotra wants that number slashed in favor of low-carb diets, citing strong evidence that they reduce obesity and type 2 diabetes. 'Re-evaluation of the guidelines is happening,' he said. 'I think we can get that sorted quite soon.' Low-carb diets — defined as roughly 20 to 57 grams of carbs per day, the equivalent of 150 to 400 calories — limit blood sugar spikes and improve insulin sensitivity, reducing the likelihood of diabetes, which currently affects one in ten Americans. High insulin levels, which often accompany high-carb diets, also promote fat storage and weight gain. By rewriting these federal recommendations, Dr Malhotra believes the government can directly influence everything from public school lunches to medical advice issued by doctors. MAHA has already exerted its influence in West Virginia, which passed the country's most comprehensive food additive ban to clean up school foods by the start of the next school year. Arkansas and Indiana have also weighed the possibility of removing junk foods from food stamp programs. Dr Malhotra told this website these states would be 'particularly amenable' to further restrictions and could serve as an example for lobbying the rest of the country. Targeting 'The New Tobacco' Another cornerstone of his vision: a crackdown on ultraprocessed foods, which he likens to smoking in the 1950s. 'Ultraprocessed foods should be treated like tobacco,' he told These products, often high in sugar, refined oils, and synthetic additives, now make up more than half of the average American diet. One study published this year estimated that diets high in ultraprocessed foods may be responsible for 120,000 premature deaths annually in the US. Citing parallels to the public health campaign against cigarettes, Dr Malhotra supports policies that would remove these foods from hospitals and schools, where people may be especially vulnerable. 'These are environments where people expect to be protected, not poisoned,' he said. He points to Arizona's recent ban on ultraprocessed foods in public schools—slated to take effect in 2026—as a model for other states. He believes California and West Virginia could be next. Arizona's bill will ban foods containing bromate, propylparaben, titanium dioxide, brominated vegetable oil, Yellow 5, Yellow 6, Blue 1, Blue 2, Green 3, Red 3 and/or Red 40 from schools. Public health data appears to support his urgency. Studies show children who consume high levels of ultraprocessed foods are more likely to become obese and suffer from high blood pressure. In hospitals, poor dietary choices have been linked to worse outcomes for patients with chronic illnesses like diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Achieving this within the next several months lie in using MAHA's impact in these states as examples to the HHS, which Dr Malhotra will communicate with as a liaison. He will also help coordinate policies drafted by state legislators and the HHS and use them to help appeal to states not as closely aligned with MAHA principles, such as California and New York. Dr Malhotra suspects states like West Virginia and California, which have both passed legislation to remove food additives, would be 'particularly amenable' to further bans on ultraprocessed foods. A Contentious Vaccine Reckoning Dr Malhotra's most controversial stance, however, is his call to halt the use of mRNA Covid vaccines. 'It's very clear to me that perhaps this is the most important issue that has galvanized MAHA and helped elect President Trump,' he said. 'There is a pandemic of the vaccine injured. We can't make America healthy again if we don't address this.' Dr Malhotra estimates there are 'hundreds of thousands' of vaccine injuries, and he wants states to pass legislation pausing use of the vaccines while a comprehensive review is conducted. Official federal data offers a more cautious picture. As of late 2024, roughly 14,000 people have filed injury claims with the U.S. vaccine injury compensation program, out of 270 million Americans who received at least one dose. Recognized vaccine-linked conditions like myocarditis and pericarditis are estimated to affect one in 50,000 recipients. Even so, Dr Malhotra said: 'I'm not saying the vaccine didn't have some benefits for some people,' referencing elderly and immunocompromised groups. But, he added, the shot 'has showed more harm than good and never should have been rolled out in the first place.' The data supporting his argument, however, is slim. A study from Yale University earlier this year identified a possible 'post-vaccination syndrome' in rare cases, suggesting a link to neurological symptoms such as dizziness, brain fog, and tinnitus. However, the researchers emphasized the study was small and effects like these are likely very rare. has also spoken with patients who claim the vaccine left them with severe injuries including paralysis, organ failure, and brain inflammation. These reports, while anecdotal, have further fueled MAHA's push to pause the vaccines and assess the risks. Dr Malhotra said: 'There's more than enough evidence. There is no reason to wait. It's a no-brainer.' He believes the political landscape is ripe for action. Florida, Idaho, and Ohio—all states that have introduced vaccine-related bills—are, in his view, 'first movers' that could implement a pause as soon as this year. Fellow MAHA figure Dr Bhattacharya also supports this approach, telling in February: 'Public trust can only be restored with a moratorium.' Rethinking Medical Education Beyond public policy, Dr Malhotra wants to address what he calls the 'overmedication' crisis in America by introducing mandatory nutrition education in medical schools and hospitals. 'Most doctors don't have a clue,' he said. He agrees with Dr Means, who recently slammed U.S. medical schools for failing to offer courses on nutrition. Dr Malhotra sees this as a chance to cut down on unnecessary prescriptions and shift toward lifestyle-based treatments. 'Doctors should be trained to help people heal, not just to manage symptoms with pills,' he said. Currently, 40 percent of Americans over age 65 take five or more prescription drugs, according to a 2024 JAMA study. Another report found that one in three Americans had been prescribed a medication that was either inappropriate or unnecessary. By educating future doctors differently, Dr Malhotra believes the health system can pivot toward prevention, especially for lifestyle-driven conditions like heart disease, obesity, and diabetes. Dr Malhotra hopes to achieve this by using his role as an advisor on MAHA's educational content to set up pilot programs in certain hospitals later this year to introduce nutrition education to doctors and medical students. The Road Ahead It remains unclear which states will be first to adopt MAHA's sweeping health platform or how quickly it could gain traction at the federal level. But Dr Malhotra said the campaign is ready to mobilize. He told this website: 'I'm going to hit the ground running and am ready to give my all to make America healthy again.' And independent experts are already on his side. Gary Brecka, a biohacker and celebrity health coach with ties to the Trump family, shared in a statement: 'Dr Malhotra's track record speaks for itself: he's been instrumental in reshaping global conversations around dietary guidelines, heart disease prevention, and medical ethics.
Reuters
07-05-2025
- Health
- Reuters
US farm secretary says new dietary guidelines coming "hopefully" in early fall
WASHINGTON, May 7 (Reuters) - U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said during a hearing in the House of Representatives on Wednesday that new dietary guidelines developed with health secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., will come in "hopefully early fall." Rollins said that she and Kennedy are working on revising the draft dietary guidelines for 2025-2030 written by the administration of former President Joe Biden. Keep up with the latest medical breakthroughs and healthcare trends with the Reuters Health Rounds newsletter. Sign up here. "I won't say that we're starting from scratch, because I think a lot of well-intentioned people did a lot of good work on that. But you'll see by the end of this year, hopefully early fall, the new set of dietary guidelines coming out from our two agencies."
