Dietary Guidelines Update Cycle Slowed to 10 Years, Mandates Scientific Rigor and Conflict Disclosure

The new Dietary Guidelines Reform Act of 2025 overhauls how the federal government creates the official nutrition advice we see everywhere—from school lunch menus to public health campaigns. The biggest change is right in the procedural weeds: the government will now update the Dietary Guidelines only every 10 years, rather than the current five-year cycle. This means the 2020 guidelines will remain the official word until the first new report under these rules is published.

The Trade-Off: Slower Updates for Stronger Science

This bill attempts a trade-off between speed and rigor. On one hand, extending the update cycle to a full decade means that integrating new, groundbreaking nutritional science—like updated recommendations on specific vitamins or fats—could take twice as long to become official federal advice. If you’re waiting for the government to catch up to the latest research on, say, fiber or protein needs, you might be waiting a while. However, the bill does allow the Secretaries of Agriculture and Health and Human Services to publish updates sooner if major new scientific evidence emerges, such as new Dietary Reference Intakes. But even that requires a 90-day heads-up to Congress and the creation of a temporary, eight-member Independent Advisory Board, which will dissolve after submitting its list of scientific questions.

In exchange for the slower pace, the bill significantly ramps up the scientific standards. Future guidelines must now go through formal rulemaking procedures (a public, structured process) and must be based on a rigorous “evidence-based review,” including external peer review by non-government experts. Every single guideline must be assigned a rating that shows the strength of the evidence supporting it. This procedural tightening is aimed at making the resulting advice more robust and less susceptible to political influence, which is a definite win for accuracy.

Narrowing the Focus: What’s Out of Bounds

One of the most consequential changes is what the guidelines are explicitly forbidden from discussing. The bill narrows the scope to focus only on direct dietary guidance and nutritional adequacy. This means the guidelines must not include topics like taxation on certain foods, social welfare policies, federal feeding program purchasing rules, farming practices, or socioeconomic factors like race, religion, or culture.

For regular people, this means the official advice will be siloed. For example, if you are a parent relying on federal assistance programs, the guidelines will tell you what to eat, but they cannot address how factors like food deserts, cultural food traditions, or the actual cost of healthy food affect your ability to follow that advice. While the intent might be to keep the guidelines purely scientific, excluding socioeconomic factors limits their real-world utility for diverse and low-income populations, ignoring the reality that access and affordability are often the biggest barriers to better nutrition.

Transparency and the Money Trail

The bill gets serious about transparency, which is a clear benefit. Anyone appointed to the advisory committees must now fully disclose all financial and nonfinancial conflicts of interest using the required OGE Form 450, and these disclosures must be made public within 30 days. This is a crucial step for ensuring that the people writing the nation’s nutritional advice aren't also on the payroll of companies that stand to gain from those recommendations. To fund all these new procedures and committees, the bill allocates $5 million annually from 2025 through 2029.