A little-known federal group assembled by the Biden-Harris administration is preparing to issue dietary guidelines for Americans that will formally recommend beans, peas, and lentils take precedence over meats like chicken and beef.
Members of the 20-person Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee voiced support for both downgrading meat, poultry, and eggs and moving beans, peas, and lentils into the protein category. The preliminary directive came during a more than five-hour meeting hosted by the National Institutes of Health last week. The committee is expected to submit its recommendations, which would be in effect through 2030, to the Department of Agriculture and Department of Health and Human Services in early December, after the presidential election taking place in one week.
The draft guidelines come as environmentalists, animal rights activists, and left-leaning dietary experts continue to ramp up attacks on traditional sources of protein—such as red meat, pork, and chicken—both in the United States and across the world. Meat has been targeted by activists for its carbon footprint and impact on animals, but it is far more protein-dense than other sources of protein.
Under the proposed guidelines presented by committee chairwoman Sarah Booth, beans, peas, and lentils would leave the vegetable category and be prioritized over soy products, seafood, meats, eggs, and poultry. The previous guidelines placed meats, poultry, and eggs at the highest level of protein sources in the American diet and kept beans, peas, and lentils in the vegetable category.
According to the committee—which the White House first announced in 2022 and said would reflect “racial, ethnic, gender, and geographic diversity”—its actions would help to “encourage plant sources of protein foods.”
The guidelines are slated to be finalized shortly after the election but before the winner takes office. The timing is relevant because the recommendations may contradict how a future administration approaches health policy.
“Behaviorally, I think there is sort of a branding crisis when it comes to protein—thinking automatically meat,” Deirdre Tobias, a member of the committee and an assistant professor in Harvard University’s Department of Nutrition, remarked during the meeting last week. “And if there are more plant sources of proteins in the protein category that could help overcome that, you know, mislabeling or misnomer or misinformation by having it more prominently.”
“I also think that that’s where we would probably offer more flexibility—where we would have an increase in plant-based. That’s going to be increasing beans, peas, and lentils at the expense of some of those other meat products, right?” she continued. “Not so much to displace vegetables that are in the vegetable category.”
Those comments were immediately endorsed by fellow committee members Hollie Raynor, a University of Tennessee researcher, and Andrea Deierlein, a New York University professor. “I do think people think just of meat, eggs, those types of sources, and having it in the protein group would, I think, encourage people to eat more beans, peas, and lentils,” said Deierlein.
A majority of the members who commented on the draft guidelines voiced support for reorganizing the protein category, and no member suggested that the prior guidelines should be preserved. Committee vice chair Angela Odoms-Young said beans, peas, and lentils should make up their own category, a proposal that received some support from other committee members.
While the dietary guidelines lack teeth in terms of forcefully changing what Americans eat, they are a key tool employed by lawmakers, educators, and doctors and are supposed to reflect current nutrition science.
“We just think this completely disregards the body of science and the reality of how beef is doing such an important job in helping meet nutrient gaps. So, it really seems out of touch,” Shalene McNeill, the executive director of nutrition science at the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, said in an interview with the Washington Free Beacon.
“We have lots of great, high-quality evidence from randomized, controlled trials that consistently show four to five-and-a-half ounces of beef per day can support good health, and that’s two to three times the amount that the average American is eating right now. Cutting back further on red meat intake is not going to help the American diet become healthier,” added McNeill. “Beef is doing a really important job of helping close nutrition gaps.”
National Pork Producers Council CEO Bryan Humphreys separately said replacing animal proteins with plant proteins “will severely compromise the American diet, as plant proteins are not nearly as nutritionally rich.”
In a statement to the Free Beacon, a Department of Health and Human Services spokeswoman said the draft guidelines “in no way represents the administration’s positions” and emphasized the committee acts independently.
The Biden-Harris administration, led by the Department of Health and Human Services, appointed every member of the committee in January 2023.
“The recent White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition and Health underscored the need to understand the science of nutrition and the role that social structures play when it comes to people eating healthy food,” Health Secretary Xavier Becerra said at the time. “The advisory committee’s work will play an instrumental role in that effort and in helping HHS and USDA improve the health and wellbeing of all Americans.”
The draft guidelines are only the most recent attacks on the meat industry.
In May 2023, for example, John Kerry, the Biden-Harris administration’s former special presidential envoy for climate, called for “innovation” in the agriculture industry during an Agriculture Department summit. Kerry argued the administration’s “net-zero” climate goals are impossible if the sector’s greenhouse gas emissions aren’t addressed, a claim that was sharply criticized by Republican lawmakers.
Months later, the United Nations published a first-of-its-kind global food systems road map, which chastised certain nations, such as the United States, for over-consuming meat. The document was issued during the most recent United Nations COP climate summit in December 2023.
The Department of Agriculture didn’t respond to a request for comment.
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