Chapter 1: What significant changes were made in the new dietary guidelines?
Welcome to Office Hours. This is our dedicated one-on-one space to go deeper, get clearer, and explore what truly moves the needle for your health. I'm Dr. Mark Hyman, and each week we're going to pull back the curtain and share the insights, the research, the lessons that don't always make it into our conversations with guests. Because at the end of the day, you are the CEO of your own health.
And for many of you, your family's health too. And you might not feel it all the time, but you have far more power and agency than you realize. I'm glad you're here. to get $50 towards your membership. Hey, everybody. I know you all heard that Dietary Guidelines came out, or maybe you didn't, because it's my world. I definitely knew about it.
I want to give you my take on it because there's a lot of buzz. There's a lot of pushback. There's a lot of arguments. And, of course, the industry is furious about this because it puts them in the crosshairs by saying highly processed food
Chapter 2: Why are ultra-processed foods highlighted in the new guidelines?
is not something you should eat, period. That's amazing. That's unbelievably revolutionary, and it's something never I thought I would see in my lifetime, never. So let's get into it and talk about what the government finally got right about food and some things that I would still want to tweak. Now, for more than 40 years, the U.S.
dietary guidelines shaped what we're told to eat by the government, and during that same time, The rates of obesity, diabetes, and chronic disease have skyrocketed.
So when the new dietary guidelines are released, it matters a lot because it shapes all of our food programs, and it also shapes other countries' food policies, and it also determines so much of what people are doing and the message about what we should be eating and what we shouldn't be eating.
So for the first time in my medical lifetime, the government is starting to acknowledge some really hard truths. Highly processed foods are harming us. Food quality matters more than calorie counting. Oh my God, all calories are not the same. I never thought I would see that because it was all about calories in, calories out.
It doesn't matter if it's from Coca-Cola or almonds, all calories are the same, nonsense. And also the whole idea that
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Chapter 3: What does the new protein recommendation mean for everyday people?
There's one diet for everybody. It's just not true. Personalization matters. There's no one-size-fits-all nutrition advice. It just doesn't work. So while the new guidelines represent real and profound progress, we still have work to do.
In today's episode, I'm going to walk you through what the guidelines finally got right, where they still need to be adjusted, and most importantly, how to apply them in real life without confusion or being overwhelmed. Now, We asked you to send in your questions about the new guidelines, and we received over 200 responses. Thank you very much.
It was clear that you're all trying to make sense of what this actually means for your health, for your family, for the choices about food you make every single day. So after breaking down the big picture, I'm going to answer some of the most common questions you asked about protein, processed foods, fats, carbohydrates, and personalization through a functional medicine lens.
Now, this isn't about following another set of rules. It's about understanding how food affects your body, So you can make informed, confident choices moving forward.
Chapter 4: How has the perception of fats changed in the new dietary guidelines?
The biggest shift in the guidelines was for the first time ever, calling out highly processed foods, sometimes known as junk food or ultra processed food, although that's kind of a messy definition. This is the most important change, a historic one. For the first time, the guidelines explicitly identify highly processed foods as a major driver of chronic disease. Massive, massive change.
Now, they define highly processed food in simple terms. Refined carbs, added sugars, chemical additives, emulsifiers, dyes, and artificial sweeteners. This is not so hard to understand, right? You can read the labels. You can know what's in there. Why does this matter? Well, these foods are heavily subsidized and they're profitable. And admitting that they're harmful is both
scientifically and politically revolutionary. Now, the evidence is pretty clear. Higher amounts of highly processed food in your diet lead to obesity, diabetes, heart disease, depression, early death, and the list goes on.
Chapter 5: What shortcomings still exist in the new dietary guidelines?
In fact, there was a big study published, I think over 32 different diseases that these contributed to. And also there are smaller, shorter-term control trials, we need bigger, longer trials, show that people eat more food and gain more weight on processed diets, even when you're eating the same amount of calories and the same amount of macronutrients, like same protein, fat, and fiber.
So there's a problem here with how these foods affect us, and they're quite different qualitatively. This finally shifts the conversation from how much you eat to what you eat. If you focus on what you eat, you don't have to worry about how much you eat. I never limit the amount of food I eat.
I only focus on what is good for me and my body, and my taste buds have shifted, my cravings are gone, and that's available for anybody. The second big idea, and this is a big deal, is an emphasis on protein. Now, if we understand protein, you have to understand how the previous guidelines were determined. They're determined by how much protein do you need to not get a protein deficiency disease.
That doesn't mean it's the optimal amount for health. It means how much you need to get really sick. I don't care about that. I care about what's optimal. And so we've changed the amount.
Chapter 6: How can families apply the new dietary guidelines in real life?
Protein is no longer seen as something we should be worried about eating too much of. The new target in the guidelines is 1.2 to 1.6 grams per kilo of body weight. I don't know why they did that because people in America know pounds, but it's somewhere around a 0.7 to 1 gram per pound of ideal body weight. It doesn't mean if you're 300 pounds, you should be 300 grams of protein.
If your ideal body weight is 150, that's the amount you should be eating. The focus really shifts from deficiency prevention to optimal health. And why does this matter? Well, muscle is the currency of longevity. It's the key to health as we age. It's how we run our metabolism, blood sugar control. It's a system.
for preventing frailty and early death and so many things, hip fractures, on and on and on. So building muscle is key. Keeping muscle is key, especially as we age. And we just are not doing that.
Chapter 7: Why is chronic disease considered a policy problem?
And so that's really important. Muscle also helps you control your blood sugar. The better muscle you have, the healthier muscle you have, the better your blood sugar control is because it's a sink for your blood sugar. And protein also makes you feel full. It doesn't cause cravings. It actually causes you feeling full and it stops the cravings.
And by the way, there's something called the thermogenic effect of protein, meaning you burn more calories metabolizing protein than you do sugars or carbs or fats. And it's just so important for all the aging longevity, really important. Now, the upper range is for people who are doing strength training.
If you want to be eating a 1.6, it's for people who are strength training or people who are pregnant. But most people do fine with 1.2 or around that. It's really, really important because if you just over, over eat protein, it can turn to sugar in your body. So you've got to strength train to actually make more muscle. So this includes animal plant proteins.
You want to focus on physiology over ideology.
Chapter 8: How can individuals personalize their dietary choices based on the new guidelines?
And this is a huge win for metabolic health. It's a huge win for our aging population. It's just a big shift. And the next big idea that's really important is the end officially of the low-fat era. Even in the last guidelines, they said we shouldn't worry about fat, but they said eat low-fat dairy. Doesn't make sense. There's no evidence for that.
In fact, there's evidence that it's worse for you to eat skim milk or have non-fat dairy. Food doesn't really act in isolation. It's not about fat grams or cholesterol numbers. It's really about how the whole food interacts with your metabolism, your gut, and your hormones. So what have we now changed? Full fat dairy is in, low fat or non-fat dairy is out.
We also have quietly kind of retreated from this fear around saturated fat. Still personalized, it's important. I think that there was some nuances that they didn't quite get right. But bottom line is that we shouldn't fear saturated fat so much. And that the science shows that full fat dairy is linked to neutral or even metabolic consequences that are better.
In fact, there was a great article published through Tufts and Darius Mazzafarian entitled, Is Butter Back? And it showed that actually it was neutral in terms of cardiovascular disease and it was beneficial in terms of diabetes. So cheese is not the same as processed meat in terms of your diet.
You want to make sure that you're eating quality saturated fat from ideally grass-fed or regenerated animals or good quality organic cheese and so forth. And yogurt, not nonfat yogurt, not sweetened yogurt, but... plain yogurt, ideally Greek yogurt, which is iron protein, is not the same as sugar-sweetened dairy substitutes. Okay, what's missing?
Well, saturated fat limits remain, and I think there's some nuances there on personalization. Some people do really, really well with saturated fat, and as a doctor who's seen thousands, tens of thousands of patients, you know, it's really humbling because you read something in a book or in a study that And then you go, wait a minute, it doesn't apply to everybody.
And you realize there's a lot of nuance here that depends on your genetics. It depends on your response to saturated fat. Some patients of mine have dropped their cholesterol 100 points by eating tons of butter and coconut oil, which is saturated fat. And others have done exactly the same and their numbers go crazy bad. So it's really about personalization and your metabolic health.
So food isn't just like a nutrient isolation. It's how the whole food matrix behaves in the body. That's really important. The next big idea that was in these guidelines was a certain metabolic reality, which it probably was, it was underappreciated. It was a single sentence, but it's revolutionary, which is this. Some people with chronic disease may benefit from lower carbohydrate diets.
Okay, this is a big sentence and it's sort of in there quietly, but if you know what you're reading, it's revolutionary. That's never been said before. And we have a carbohydrate intolerant population. When I mean carbohydrates, I don't mean broccoli. I don't mean nuts. I don't mean seeds. I don't mean brown rice. I mean sugar and starch.
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