Health & Environmental Impact of New Dietary Guidelines

The author is a Junior at Laurel School in Ohio and a Director for YEPT. This story is part of The 89 Percent Project, an initiative of the global journalism collaboration with Covering Climate Now.

The current Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has released multiple statements over the past few months promising a new, revised, and abridged version of the federal government's Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA).

According to Grace Chamberlain, a policy associate with the Center for Science in the Public Interest, “The DGA are science-based recommendations developed every five years by the U.S. Departments of Agriculture (USDA) and Health and Human Services (HHS), informed by a panel of independent experts who conduct a rigorous review of the latest nutrition evidence.” Currently, these guidelines recommend that every American over the age of nine consume the equivalent of three cups of dairy daily or lactose-free or fortified soy alternatives; however, Kennedy plans to increase this amount.

Chamberlain continues that “The Guidelines shape not just population dietary advice, but also federal nutrition programs that serve one in four Americans. They have the potential to significantly improve public health — if leaders follow the data.”

Kennedy, however, has indicated that he will not be acting in accordance with much of the available nutritional data. As Nicholas Florko of The Atlantic reports, “In December, the Biden administration released the scientific report that is supposed to undergird the guidelines. But Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has since promised to start from scratch and remake the recommendations to match his convictions about how Americans should be eating.”

While the exact changes RFK Jr. will make to the guidelines are not yet clear, one thing certainly is: he has some serious beef with former Biden Administration officials. 

Why dairy?

Kennedy has fit his move to expand dairy recommendations under the umbrella of his Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) campaign. However, his fixation on dairy is nothing new. RFK Jr. has had an affinity for it from a young age. “I grew up in a world where milk was the healthiest thing that you could eat," Kennedy said on Monday in a news conference with ABC News. “There's a tremendous amount of emerging science that talks about the need for more protein in our diet and more fats in our diet. And there's no industry that does that better than this industry.”

Photo Credit: Pixabay

Kennedy has gone as far as to announce his frequent consumption of raw milk, which is milk that has not gone through the pasteurization process. Experts such as Dr. Gabriel Fillippelli question this idealistic view of dairy products.

Dr. Filippelli, a Chancellor’s Professor of Earth Sciences and Executive Director of the Indiana University Environmental Resilience Institute, stated in an email interview that “Raw milk can contain bacteria that are dangerous for humans, and the vast majority of health professionals and the FDA strongly recommend against consuming raw dairy.” This is evident in state-level legislation across the nation; Dr. Fillippelli notes, “selling raw milk products is illegal in some states.” 

Dr. Fillippelli continues that dairy products aren’t nutritionally exceptional. They don’t provide any unique or hard-to-obtain dietary value. He states, “Many foods have adequate protein, including grains, vegetables, meat, fish, etc. I don’t think that dairy-based proteins are a major player in most people’s dietary intake of protein with the exception of babies and toddlers.”

How will this affect Americans – and the world?

Most doctors and scientists don’t see dairy as a panacea, especially when it’s consumed in excess. According to Matthew Solan, the executive editor of Harvard Men's Health Watch, “Adding some dairy to your daily diet — a splash of milk in your coffee or a cup poured over your breakfast cereal, or a slice of cheese on a sandwich — can help you get some of the vital nutrients you need.” 

Vasanti Malik, a nutrition research scientist with the Harvard School of Public Health, agrees, “[K]eep in mind that eating a well-balanced diet that includes plenty of green leafy vegetables and nuts can better help you get the calcium and protein you need rather than relying too much on dairy.”

Further, in a review for The New England Journal of Medicine, Dr. Walter C. Willett, also with the Harvard School of Public Health, detailed, “In international comparisons, consumption of dairy products is strongly correlated with rates of breast cancer, prostate cancer, and other cancers.”

Outside of direct health impacts, dairy production has a large environmental toll. 

According to Dr. Fillippelli, “The main ways [that dairy production affects the environment] are (1) land disturbance impacts from grazing and feeding facilities, (2) direct emissions of methane from cattle, and (3) the land and resources (fertilizers, water, herbicides, fuel) involved in cultivating grains for cattle feed.” These consequences fuel climate change and cause runoff that harms local ecosystems.

Dr. Fillippelli further notes that “there are many non-dairy substitutes that are better for the environment, including nut and oat milks.” The New England Journal of Medicine’s review quantifies that the environmental harms of these alternatives are 5 to 10 times less per unit of protein.

What next?

Although he initially claimed that the new dietary guidelines would be out by the end of August, Kennedy recently pushed their release to the end of September. He hasn’t detailed exactly what the changes he is making will look like, aside from stating that the new dietary guidelines "will elevate dairy." 

To Kennedy, this likely will look like increasing the recommended consumption as well as pursuing relaxed regulations regarding pasteurization. Despite his background in environmentalism, serving as an attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council and founding an environmental group that fights for clean water internationally, it is likely that the new dietary regulations will lead to an increase in carbon emissions and directly harm human health.

Photo courtesy of Matthias Zomer and Pexels

The fact that this initiative is coming out of a democratic government is especially remarkable. Supposedly, the decisions made by legislatures in these nations reflect the preferences of their constituents. In the United States, planetary protection has mounting support. As the Pew Research Center reports in a 2024 study, “Two-thirds of U.S. adults (67%) say protecting the environment for future generations is a very important consideration.” 

This recognition of the importance of environmental protection is not unique to the United States. As the 89 Percent Project, an international initiative that aims to bring awareness to the breadth of consensus on climate action, quantifies, “Between 80 and 89% of the world’s people want their governments to be doing more to address climate change.”

With this in mind, it’s time for America to ask itself: Does the “M” in MAHA actually stand for “moo?”

Health & Environmental Impact of New Dietary Guidelines © 2025 by Youth Environmental Press Team is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/