CHICAGO, January 27, 2026 — When the federal government issued new recommendations in mid-January of what Americans should eat for improved health, cabinet officials hailed the release as an historic moment.
The new nutrition guidelines “will revolutionize our nation’s food culture,” declared U.S. Secretary of Health & Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Indeed, said the Secretary, publication of the 2026 Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGAs) might be the most profound step the nation has ever taken toward better health.
The impact will extend far beyond waistlines and medical expenses, the officials declared. Americans who follow the guidelines should easily be able to work an extra year before retiring, changing the fortunes of families and easing the burden of entitlements on government, predicted Dr. Mehmet Oz, the former tv star who now runs Medicaid and Medicare.
Others pointed out that the recommendations turn the familiar food pyramid of past decades literally upside down.
But after reviewing the new guidelines, many in the food business are wondering what the officials see that they don’t.
“Guidelines that urge Americans to move away from packaged goods, it’s kind of validation of where we’ve already been heading,” said Misty Skolnick, co-owner of the snack company Uncle Jerry’s Pretzels. She was referring to the guidelines’ core recommendation that Americans swap out the highly processed foods that constitute a big part of the national diet with what the new guidelines term “real food.”
It’s a direction many contend the food-away-from-home industry has been moving toward for some time because of pressure from consumers, public health advocates, and state lawmakers.
For that reason, the suggestions put forth in the new guidelines have prompted more head-scratching from food-away-from-home professionals than hurrahs or hisses.
“Who can disagree with getting away from ultra-processed foods, from added sugar, from artificial dyes?” commented Lisa Eberhart, Director of Nutrition for Menu Analytics, a firm that advises restaurants on how to make their menus “cleaner” and more healthful. She co-founded the firm after serving nearly 12 years as Director of Nutrition and Wellness for North Carolina State University.
“The issue,” Eberhart continued, “is how to get there.”
She’s hardly alone in viewing the new dietary regulations as a statement of new ideals, not a roadmap for incorporating them into the American diet. Some contrasted the recommendations, a rundown of how many servings consumers should ideally consume of various foods, with My Plate, the visual guide to good nutrition the U.S. Department of Agriculture put forth in 2011. It shows how much of a lunch or dinner plate should be allocated to various food types—an actual model of what a healthful meal should look like.
For onsite foodservice operations—the FAFH outlets likely to be most immediately and profoundly influenced by the new guidelines—the biggest issue is practicality. The new DGAs call for more scratch cooking and less reliance on foods that were pre-prepped in factories. But how will institutions that struggle to afford processed foods be able to cover the higher labor and food costs of the “real food” championed in the new recommendations? New kitchen equipment may even be needed to cook from scratch.
Without the government providing the how’s, “they’re still pointing a finger at people in the grocery store who are making bad choices,” said Dana Whitney, Director of School Nutrition for Henrico County (Va.) Public Schools. “They’re not saying how we improve the health of Americans.”
The School Nutrition Association (SNA), an advocacy group for the directors of school foodservices nationwide, issued a report the day before the DGAs’ release that showed 99% of school cafeterias would need more funding to replace processed foods with scratch-cooked items. About 79% of the operations surveyed for the study described the need as “extreme.”
Several of the school foodservice directors contacted for this article voiced fears that even deep-pocketed food manufacturers would pull out of the school market rather than incur the cost of reformulating processed foods to fit the new dietary recommendations.
Advocates of the new guidelines largely dismissed concerns about the cost of complying with the reset standards. Brooke Rollins, Secretary of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, asserted during what the Administration touted as a “celebration” of the new recommendations that a family could meet the new guidelines without spending more than $3 per plate.
According to the SNA, schools participating in the National School Lunch Program are currently spending an average of $4.70 a meal.
Are the directives feasible?
Christine Clarahan, Director of Foodservices for Crown Point (Ind.) Community School Corp., has another feasibility concern.
“We’ve been working so hard for 15 years to reduce sodium levels,” said Clarahan, vice chairperson of IFMA The Food Away from Home Association’s discussion group for the schools segment. “Now they’re targeting added sugars. We’ve been using sugar to offset the sodium we've taken out."
The new guidelines recommend that children never be offered foods containing added sugar until they’re 10 years of age. They call for limiting the intake for older children and adults to 10 grams per serving, as opposed to the prior recommendation of keeping the intake of added sugar below 10% of total calories consumed in a day.
Clarahan worries that children won’t eat the more-healthful options they’re offered because it doesn’t taste good. The new guidelines address that issue only in passing, remarking in a sentence that herbs and spices can always be used as salt and sugar replacements. Yet those flavoring agents are more expensive.
The biggest feasibility issue with the new guidelines seems to be the new recommendations for the consumption of saturated fats, once a major villain to nutritionists and public health officials. The new standards call for significantly increasing servings of red meat, cheese, and butter.
“We’re ending the war on saturated fats,” Kennedy declared in announcing the new DGAs.
Yet the new guidelines keep the government’s prior recommendation that saturated fats account for no more than 10% of someone’s total caloric intake. The two advisories clearly appear to contradict one another.
Many of the FAFH industry’s concerns about the new DGAs will likely be addressed during the rulemaking process, the step where stakeholders provide input on pending regulatory changes. It’s the phase where broad principles are turned into actual operational directives. The final rules will then become obligations that schools, prisons, veterans’ facilities, and other institutions will have to meet if they want their foodservice facilities to continue receiving federal subsidies.
Until then, “I’m not doing anything differently because I don’t think the dust has settled,” said Henrico County Public School’s Whitney. “There are a lot of things that may not be set yet.”