Federal nutrition guidelines likely won’t warn Americans about “ultra-processed” foods after a committee said there’s no clear definition and more study is needed — a win for companies like General Mills and Post Consumer Brands, who argued that ultra-processed guidelines would be overly broad and include potentially healthy food.
The Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee this week issued a final recommendation for the 2025-2030 guidelines. It will ultimately be up to the next presidential administration and its political appointees — including Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Health and Human Services secretary-designate, who has vowed to go after the food industry — to shape and implement the guidance.
The guidelines inform health messaging and federal spending on school lunches and food aid.
The committee reviewed many studies that link ultra-processed foods to poor health outcomes but graded the evidence as “limited” or in some cases lacking.
“This body of evidence was difficult to assess, largely because of the lack of clear definition of ultra-processed foods,” the report said. “The current conclusion … might change if a more rigorous definition of ultra-processed foods is developed and further studies are conducted.”
Critics say studies already are clear: Food that is “irresistibly delicious that can’t be made in home kitchens,” as nutritionist Marion Nestle puts it, leads to excess calorie consumption and high obesity rates. Nearly 43% of American adults and 20% of U.S. children are considered obese, some of the highest rates in the world.
“They are ignoring tons of evidence, some of it remarkably well controlled,” Nestle said Wednesday. “I am not arguing for lower scientific standards. I just think the standards set by the committee cannot be met by available nutrition research. We know enough by now to advise reducing intake of ultra-processed foods on the basis that they encourage greater caloric intake.”
The soft texture of processed food tricks the brain into eating more because it doesn’t trigger satiety like whole foods do. That’s something food companies have capitalized on for decades, said Francis McGlone, former lead neuroscientist at Unilever, in a recent BBC documentary.
“There’s an opportunity there for some kind of scurrilous behavior in making food softer so that people would eat more and therefore you sell more of your product,” he said.
Food companies and industry groups opposed to any guidance that would warn consumers against eating their products seized on the lack of a single definition used across ultra-processed food studies.
The nation’s top three cereal makers — General Mills, Post and Kellogg — told the committee this year that lumping 75% of the U.S. food supply into “ultra-processed” ignores “safety, convenience, accessibility and affordability.”
“Defining the overall healthfulness of a food based on the level of processing discounts the benefits of a food’s nutrient density,” they said in a letter.
The Consumer Federation of America countered in its own letter the “myth that food processing has no impact on dietary quality.”
“U.S. consumers, and particularly children, need relief from a food system oriented around the industry’s profit imperative,” the nonprofit wrote to the committee.
While the committee punted on ultra-processed foods, it still recommended emphasizing “consumption of vegetables, fruits, legumes (beans, peas, lentils), whole grains, nuts, and fish/seafood,” for which there is strong evidence for better health outcomes.
University of Minnesota nutrition professor Joanne Slavin, who served on the 2010 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, said the new guidelines that will be adopted won’t be “earth-shaking.”
“I don’t see much change from (guidelines) of the past,” she said. “Taste, cost, convenience, culture and nutrition all drive food choice.”
Dietary guidelines committee punts on ultra-processed food, a win for food companies
