AMNA NAWAZ: The Trump administration released new dietary guidelines today that will shape everything from school lunches to medical advice.

GEOFF BENNETT: The new guidance puts a bigger emphasis on eating more protein and dairy, something Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

has long sought.

But the administration also held on to some traditional and mainstream guidelines.

William Brangham has more.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Jeff, during a press conference at the White House, Secretary Kennedy literally turned that traditional food pyramid upside down to mirror what he and other Trump officials said Americans should eat.

That's significantly more protein and dairy, numerous servings of fruits and vegetables and other healthy fats, all of that at the top, and fewer whole grains down at the bottom.

Some of the other specific recommendations, less added sugar, that children should not eat added sugars until they are 10 years old, three servings of dairy a day, including whole milk, rather than low-fat, fewer processed foods, period.

And, controversially, it removed recommendations to limit alcohol consumption.

These guidelines are updated every five years.

And Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins said today's guidance had one basic principle.

BROOKE ROLLINS, U.S.

Secretary of Agriculture: Thankfully, the solution is simple and should be noncontroversial, eat real food.

We are finally putting real food back at the center of the American diet, real food that nourishes the body, restores health, fuels energy, and builds strength.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: But these new recommendations are getting mixed reviews from nutrition experts and medical associations.

So, to help break down this new guidance, we are joined again by Lindsey Smith Taillie.

She's a nutrition epidemiologist and co-director of the Global Food Research Program at UNC Chapel Hill.

Lindsey, so nice to have you back on the program.

Let's get your overall broad-brush take on these guidelines.

What do you like?

What don't you like?

LINDSEY SMITH TAILLIE, Nutrition Epidemiologist, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill: Thank you so much for having me.

I think there's a lot to like in these guidelines and also a number of items to be concerned about.

In terms of what to like, I think the overall focus on eating real food is great and really landmark progress in the U.S., where we know that the majority of our diets come from ultra-processed foods that are linked to an array of chronic diseases.

And so having this very clear, simple guidance to eat real food, I think is enormously helpful, both for policymakers and for your everyday consumer.

On the other hand the guidelines also contain a number of items, such as the increased recommendation for meat and dairy and the elimination of the alcohol guideline, that are quite concerning.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: It's striking to me that the idea that the federal government is only now saying to people, eat real food, like, how is it that we have taken this long to say something so simple?

LINDSEY SMITH TAILLIE: I think there are a number of reasons.

First of all, from a scientific perspective, it's only been in about the last decade or so that we have really thought of food in this particular way, where we're looking at almost a non-nutritional dimension, processing, how was the food actually made and packaged and distributed?

So that is new.

I think the other thing that is the reason why we haven't done this before is conflicts of interest.

So when you look at who is on the Dietary Guidelines Scientific Committee and who funds their research, in the past, those scientists have been funded by organizations that produce ultra-processed foods.

And I think that has a lot to do with what kind of guidelines you see in the previous guidelines and then also today.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: So I want to double back to what you were saying before about what seems to be a real heavy focus on meat and dairy.

If you just look at that pyramid itself, in the upper left corner, it's chicken and beef and steak and cheese and hamburger.

Where do you think that is coming from?

And what is it that troubles you about that.

LINDSEY SMITH TAILLIE: Yes, absolutely.

So I think there are two things that are troubling to me about that.

The first is that this is really in conflict with what the recent Dietary Guidelines Committee of Scientists recommended, and also that this is something that could potentially be very harmful for the environment, because we know that beef production in particular is responsible for the majority of food-related environmental harms.

So that's part one.

And then I think the second thing that goes along with what I was saying earlier about conflicts of interest is that RFK Jr., one of his main stances that we were also excited about is that he promised to get rid of conflicts of interest from the dietary guidelines, things like this ultra-processed food conflicts of interest that I was talking about earlier.

But what we see when we look at the scientists who created this report is that the majority of them have recent financial ties to the beef and dairy industries.

And so we still have the same question of, is this actually based in gold standard scientific evidence, or is this essentially food industry propaganda that is kind of coming from the federal government?

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Secretary Rollins in that announcement today said that this guidance will have a particularly big impact on school lunches, what's served to children in schools.

How so?

LINDSEY SMITH TAILLIE: So, right now, school lunches have no guidelines around their processing levels.

And so this guideline at a very high level, this guideline of eating real foods, could have profound effects, because the majority of school lunches are coming from ready-to-eat, ready-to-heat and highly processed sources.

And then I think the other major shift in the guideline is really on added sugar.

The government was actually just in the process for the first time of implementing an added sugar guideline.

But this new recommendation is much more strict than previous recommendations.

And so if it gets implemented in schools, we can imagine seeing things like reductions in sweetened, flavored milks for example or all the refined grains that are in school lunches.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: All right, Lindsey Smith Taillie of UNC Chapel Hill, always great to talk to you.

Thank you so much.

LINDSEY SMITH TAILLIE: Thank you so much for having me.