--- title: The History of the U.S. Dietary Guidelines description: The 2015 dietary guidelines have been released. Here's a history of diet guidelines in the U.S. canonical: https://time.com/4125642/dietary-guidelines-history/ author: Alexandra Sifferlin article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2016-01-07T15:00:08.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T08:04:46.778Z article:section: Health og:title: The History of the U.S. Dietary Guidelines og:description: The 2015 dietary guidelines have been released. Here's a history of diet guidelines in the U.S. og:url: https://time.com/4125642/dietary-guidelines-history/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt07443367086ed64b/69887216cd1bba5aa96fe34f/50-healthiest-foods-asparagus1.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2100 og:image:height: 1181 og:image:alt: healthiest foods, health food, diet, nutrition, time.com stock, asparagus og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: The History of the U.S. Dietary Guidelines twitter:description: The 2015 dietary guidelines have been released. Here's a history of diet guidelines in the U.S. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt07443367086ed64b/69887216cd1bba5aa96fe34f/50-healthiest-foods-asparagus1.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # The U.S. Food Guidelines Have Always Been Controversial > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. TIME is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: August 2026. ## TIME Health Matters: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition Health Matters is one of seven email newsletters published by TIME, the news organization founded in 1923. The latest health news and expert advice on living well. Health Matters makes the fast-moving world of health more useful, surprising and human, from the latest science and medical breakthroughs to practical ideas for living better. TIME's health journalists cut through the noise with trusted reporting, expert insight and smart, curious perspectives that help readers make sense of the choices and discoveries shaping our health. 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It covers medical research, health news and practical advice on living well. #### Where can I get reliable health news by email? Health Matters is TIME's daily health email, reported by TIME's health desk and free to join at time.com/newsletters. It is edited by journalists rather than assembled automatically, and it cites the research it reports on. #### Is Health Matters free? Yes. Health Matters is a free daily newsletter from TIME, available at time.com/newsletters. #### Who reads TIME's Health Matters newsletter? Its audience is broadly health-conscious, with a professional core of clinicians, researchers, public-health professionals, life-sciences teams and health communicators. ## Video: The Truth About Fat [Watch (HLS stream): The Truth About Fat](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/uYGhfNfS.m3u8) (5:15)  _Published 2014-06-12. When you want to lose weight or get healthy, what is the first thing you would normally cut from your diet? If you said fat, you're not alone_ by [Alexandra Sifferlin](https://time.com/author/alexandra-sifferlin/) ## Alexandra Sifferlin Jan 7, 2016 3:00 PM UTC  Danny Kim for TIME by [Alexandra Sifferlin](https://time.com/author/alexandra-sifferlin/) ## Alexandra Sifferlin Jan 7, 2016 3:00 PM UTC Today, [the new 2015 Dietary Guidelines](http://time.com/4142859/2015-us-dietary-guidelines/) were released, recommending Americans eat more fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and varied proteins. This year’s guidelines were the subject of much controversy, including arguments over whether [issues like sustainability should be included](http://time.com/4066290/dietary-guidelines-sustainability-foods/) in recommendations for how Americans eat. The new guidelines did not recommend limits on processed or red meat. But [quarreling](http://time.com/4065503/congress-federal-diet-guidelines/) isn’t unusual when it comes to American diet recommendations. The guidelines as we know them today—released by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) every five years—started from a disagreement. **MORE:** [The 50 (New) Healthiest Foods—With Recipes](http://time.com/4121973/the-50-new-healthiest-foods-of-all-time-with-recipes/) In 1977, the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs, led by Senator George McGovern, recommended “Dietary Goals” for the American people: consume only as much energy as you expend, eat more naturally occurring sugars, consume more fruits and vegetables and go easy on eggs and butter. The Dietary Goals received backlash from both industry and the science community over whether they were supported by enough evidence. From that backlash emerged a decision to have the USDA and HHS partner. They selected scientists from both departments and created what would become the 1980 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, which recommended [seven ways to have a good diet](http://health.gov/dietaryguidelines/1980thin.pdf), including eating a variety of foods, avoiding too much fat and cholesterol and cutting down on sugar. But once again, the development approach and the guidelines themselves were criticized. Ultimately, the HHS and USDA were directed to form an advisory committee that would make sure outside advice would be included in future guidelines. A Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee was formed and used for the first time in the creation of the 1985 guidelines. This time, the advice was better received. **MORE:** [The War On Delicious](http://time.com/4092378/red-meat-hot-dogs-and-the-war-on-delicious/) Even before diet guidelines were officially released in the way they are now, federal agencies have long recommended ways for Americans to be better eaters. [As TIME reported in 1964](http://time.com/vault/issue/1964-05-15/page/68/), a federal Food and Nutrition Board recommended that an American man and woman cut 300 and 200 calories out of their daily diet, respectively. “The affluent life in the U.S. of the 1960s is also the sweet life, the fat life and the soft life—or so the top U.S. experts have decided,” TIME wrote, adding that “the difference is the caloric content of two average martinis.” Through the years, diet recommendations in the U.S. have moved away from recommending specific nutrients and more toward food-based recommendations. Even the contentious guidelines released in 1977 marked a shift that focused more on avoiding foods linked to chronic disease. In recent years, there has been significant debate about whether [cutting out fat](http://time.com/2863227/ending-the-war-on-fat/) should continue to be a focus ([the 2010 guidelines](http://health.gov/dietaryguidelines/2010/) recommend fat-free and low-fat dairy products), and whether [cholesterol is still a nutrient of concern.](http://time.com/3705734/cholesterol-dietary-guidelines/) “Unfortunately, what has remained consistent over the years is that Americans have not followed Dietary Guidelines recommendations,” representatives from the Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion at the USDA told TIME in statement. The agency says the Healthy Eating Index (HEI) was created to measure how closely Americans’ diets fall in line with the Dietary Guidelines, and Americans’ HEI score on a 100 point scale has been between 49 and 58 since the 1990s. With emerging science—[processed meat was recently declared carcinogenic](http://time.com/4092378/red-meat-hot-dogs-and-the-war-on-delicious/)—and bickering among industry and the science community, it’s not hard to see how eating healthy can be confusing. The key recommendations in this year’s guidelines to eat more fruits and vegetables remains advice worth following. As for the rest? Do as Americans always have, and join in the quarreling. ## Transcript [ MUSIC ] There's something we all enjoy about staying for dinner. You ever thought why? What was on your dinner table when you were younger? Chances are it had a lot to do with, what your doctor was telling you is healthy. Building a strong healthy body is like building a strong, beautiful building. If the foundation is weak, the whole building will be weak. It takes five fingers to point the way to healthful eating habits. Well, here we go. For years, the government published dietary guidelines. Meant to keep Americans healthy. There's a great deal to learn. Tell me what you eat, and I'll tell you what you are. The body needs certain substances to live and grow. And remember, your body isn't just like an automobile. For years, the key measures of those guidelines were the same, cut fat from your diet. The committee's original report urged Americans to reduce their risk of heart attack. By reducing their intake of cholesterol down to the equivalent of about one egg a day. And those guidelines had an effect. From 1977 to 2012, per capita consumption of eggs fell by 9 %, beef by 37 %, whole milk by 72 %. Calories from saturated fat fell, while calories from supposedly safe carbohydrates increased. As one expert put it, it was a vast nutritional experiment. With nearly a million American's a year dropping dead from heart disease in the mid 80s, we had to try something. Nearly four decades later results are in. The experiment was a failure. Americans are sicker than they've ever been before. The prevalence of diabetes has gone up 157 % from 1980 to 2011. Nearly one in ten Americans now has the disease. Causing the public health system $ 245 billion a year. Heart disease is still the number one killer in the country. Americans are as obese as ever. So, what went wrong? Good old granola. Great for taste but loaded with fat. It doesn't take much of imagine a leap to assume that fat would make us fat, clog our arteries and raise the risk of heart disease. It turns out that saturated fat is a lot more complicated than we think. Carbohydrates and fats are nutrients. Like man, you need nutrients to live and grow. [ MUSIC ] Firstly, there are two kinds of cholesterol. LDL which is linked to heart disease and HDL which can be protective. Fats that course through the blood are known as triglycerides and high levels of those are linked to heart disease. Saturated fat raises LDL cholesterol but also raises HDL. Moving LDL buildup on arterial walls. So raising both, makes saturated fat a cardio wash. One key piece of information is that LDL seems to come in two forms. Large and fluffy, small and dense. Those smaller particles are linked to heart disease, while the larger ones are mostly benign. Saturated fat increases the number of large particles. The opposite happens with carbs. I don't get it. Researchers have long since discovered the kind of fats found in olives and in fish like salmon. Are actually heart protective. Now it turns out the fats found in meat and dairy, aren't as bad as we feared before. So that means by focusing so much on fats. We may actually have been making ourselves sicker. So, she brings up the subject of reduced- fat cheese. It's a fat- free [ UNKNOWN ]. Fat- free, cholesterol free. Low- fat granola. Reduced- fat Kettle chips. Reduced- fat Chips Ahoy. Lowfat cottage cheese. Non- fat yogurt is the perfect example. The thinking for consumers was simple. Fat was dangerous. This product had no fat. Therefore, it must be healthy. It's non- fat, which means less calories. [ MUSIC ] But amid the confusion about fat, we end up replacing it in our diets with sugars and carbohydrates, which meant our calorie intake was actually going up. When carbs and things like corn and white bread are ingested into your body, their converted into sugars. Those sugars convert to insulin cuz it's fat cells go into storage overdrive, leading to weight gain. Since fewer calories are then left to fill the body, you begin to feel hungry it means our metabolism begins to slow down in effort to save energy, we eat more and we gain more weight, never quite feeling full. As this process repeats, our cells become more resistant to insulin, which causes us to gain more weight, which increases insulin resistance in a vicious circle. Cut calories, and people just get hungrier. Obesity, diabetes, high triglycerides and low HDL cholesterol can all follow. Study after study has found it's very difficult to lose weight on a very low- fat diet. Possibly because fat and meat can produce a sense of satiety, that's hard to achieve with carbs, making it easier to simply stop eating. But it isn't just the increase in carbs that affects us. These processed, low saturated fat alternatives, come loaded with sugars, salt, preservatives, and even some unhealthy fats. So what's the real alternative? As one extra puts it, the cold hard truth about diet is that the only way to eat well, is to eat well. You'll be happier and you'll be healthier, if you focus on real whole foods, whether they have fat or not. Got it. 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