The Dr. Hyman Show - Office Hours: Answering Your Questions on the New Dietary Guidelines

Episode Date: January 19, 2026

In this Office Hours episode, I break down what the government finally got right about food, where the new guidelines still fall short, and—most importantly—how to apply them in real life without confusion or overwhelm. For the first time in decades, there’s meaningful progress: a recognition that ultra-processed foods are harming us, that protein matters for optimal health, and that nutrition isn’t one-size-fits-all. But there’s still work to do. In this episode, I break down: • Why calling out ultra-processed foods is the most important—and historic—shift in the new guidelines • What the new protein recommendations actually mean for everyday people • Why the low-fat era is finally ending—and why whole foods matter more than isolated nutrients • Where the guidelines still fall short, including saturated fat limits, whole grain recommendations, and lack of personalization • How to apply the guidelines to kids and families without perfection or overwhelm • Why chronic disease is a policy problem—not a personal failure The new dietary guidelines are a foundation, not a finish line. Use them as a starting point: focus on food quality, reduce ultra-processed foods, prioritize protein, and personalize your choices based on how your body responds. Visit ⁠functionhealth.com⁠ for 160+ lab tests at just $365 a year. Helpful Resources: Join the 10-Day Detox to Reset Your Health https://drhyman.com/pages/10-day-detox Nutrition 101: The Foundation of Feeling Your Best https://drhyman.com/pages/nutrition-101 Pre-order my book, Food Fix Uncensored: https://drhyman.com/pages/food-fix Have a question you’d love answered on Office Hours? Submit it here 👉https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdNF2y4lFWEOMLlzVNlFDpJ4xl7oOpH9NlImMoHr5mHggL_Ww/viewform?usp=header

Welcome to office hours. This is our dedicated one-on-one space to go deeper, get clear, 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 in agency than you realize. I'm glad you're here. This episode is brought to you by Function Health, empowering you to live with.

100 healthy years with over 160 lab tests at just $365 a year. Sign up today at functionhealth.com slash mark and use code Mark 2026 to get $50 towards your membership. Hey, everybody. I know you all heard the Dietary Islands came out and, or maybe 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 the in the crosshairs by saying highly processed food is not something you should eat, period. That's amazing. That's unbelievably revolutionary, and it's something never I thought was seen 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 for them cocoa, cola, or almonds, all calories are the same nonsense. And also, the whole idea that 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, when 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 them in big picture,

I'm going to answer some 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 roles. It's about understanding how food affects your body so you can make informed, confident choices moving forward. The biggest shift in the guidelines was for the first time ever

calling out highly processed food, 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 it'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. In fact, it 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 you 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. 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 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. It's if your ideal body weight's 150, that's about 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 help as we age. It's how we run our metabolism, our blood sugar control. It's essential 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. 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 you.

cravings, it actually causes you feeling full and it stops the cravings. And by the way, there's something called the thermogenic effective 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 and longevity, really important. Now, the upper range is for people who are doing strain training. If you want to be eating at 1.6, it's for people of strain training or people 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 a strength train to actually make more muscle. So this includes animal plant proteins. You want to focus on physiology over ideology. 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, it'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 skin 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 hormone. 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 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 sign 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 Mazafarian 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 regenerative as animals or good quality organic cheese and so forth. And yogurt, not non-fat 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 has seen thousands, tens of thousands of patients, you know, it's really humbling because you read something in a book or in a study, 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 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. And why this is so important,

the type of diabetes and metabolic issues, pre-diabetes, metabolic syndrome are not calorie problems. They're a problem of carbohydrate intolerance and hormonal dysregulation. Too much insulin drives all this and it affects 90% of the population in some way or another. That's huge. So it's really important to understand that this is a revolutionary sentence. So carb restriction is clear that it improves glycemic control. Now, VERDA Health is an incredible company. I have nothing to do with it, but their data is compelling. They use ketogenic diets, which is basically 75% fat, 5% carbs, and the rest of protein, and are reversing diabetes at a revolutionary rate, better than even gastric bypass.

You can put diabetes in remission in 60% of cases, get people off insulin most of the time, over 90%, 100% get off some of the main diabetes medications, really, really important. So the beautiful thing about these dietary guidelines is not like, there's one diet for everybody, but it acknowledges that personalization matters, that we're all different, that there's biological diversity. Now get this. Almost 80% of people abandon their New Year's resolutions by February. After decades in medicine, here's what I learned. Real change doesn't come from willpower alone. It comes from understanding what's actually happening inside your body. Weight loss issues could be linked to leptin resistance. Exhaustion could be linked to thory dysfunction. And I've

seen it so many times. Someone feels great, energized, eating clean, crushing their workouts. Then their labs tell a different story. Siling inflammation, hormone imbalances, nutrient deficiencies you can't feel until they become problems you can't ignore. And that's why we build function, giving you access to over 160 lab tests for your heart, your hormones, metabolism, nutrients, toxins, and lots more, trusted by hundreds of thousands of members for $365 a year. So this year, don't rely on guesswork, get your data, track what matters, and make resolutions based on your biology. Start your path to 100 healthy years at functionhealth.com. Now, where the guidelines still fall a little bit short is, again, around the saturated

fat. I think there's some nuance there about personalization and about genetics. It's capped at 10%. There's not really strong causal evidence, meaning, you know, randomized controlled trials that show it's really bad in the right context. But there's a couple of very, very, very, very, very important things. So listen up, guys. If you eat saturated fat, butter, meat, meat.

coconut oil, et cetera, full fat dairy, whatever, in the context of a diet that's also high in starch and sugar, it's a big problem. So you can eat saturated fat, but you can't eat it with starch and sugar in your diet. It can't eat it if you're eating that too because then you get into real problems with your cholesterol and your heart disease risk and your diabetes risk.

So context matters, what replaces it matters, food force matters, metabolic health matters, just remember you cannot eat a lot of saturated fat if you are also eating a diet high in refined starches and sugars. That's really key. All right. So what else? Whole grains are recommended pretty good. I think it's important, but previous guidelines were like, eat, you know, some whole grains, but it's okay if you eat half your diet in white flour. Well, that's crazy. So the fact that they recommended whole grains primarily is really important. They didn't really address that some people even like whole grains may not be okay if you're diabetic, for example, you might do better without them.

The next point I want to make here is that in the guidelines that dairy was treated as universally beneficial. It says choose dairy, three servings a day. And I think that's a little problematic because they should have said, if you want to eat dairy, it's okay, eat whole fat dairy, but it shouldn't be a mandatory recommendation. It kind of is in the guidelines. And the reason is, Some people have problems. 75% of the world's lactose intolerant. Some people are casein sensitive. Some people have immune issues with it, gut issues with it.

Really important to acknowledge that this is not generally something everybody should absolutely be eating to have a healthy life. It's not. It's optional. After weaning, don't eat in dairy. But if you want, I do weight protein. I have yogurt sometimes. I have cheese sometimes.

It's fine. But just be aware, it's not something you have to have to be healthy. And there's still some, you know, lack of guide around personalization. They don't really talk about tools we have to actually understand what's happening. Lab testing like Function Health.com, glucose monitors, the latter saying genetics, just really a better nuance. So we asked you to send in questions. We're going to do the Ask Me Anything questions here, or Ask Mark Anything.

I don't know it was AMA. Ask Mark Anything. And you had questions. So let's walk through most of the common questions I saw come up. What do the new protein recommendations actually mean for everyday people? What this really means is that most people have been under-eating protein for years, especially women, pregnant women, and older adults, especially older adults, because their appetite goes down, they don't eat as much, and they muscle waste very fast.

They get something called sarcopenia. So protein, though, isn't just about muscles. It's about blood sugar control. It's about metabolism. It's about immune function, but healthy aging. You know, protein is the only macronutrient, protein fat and carb. only one of those that's necessary in large amounts. And, you know, carbs you don't need.

There's no essential carbohydrate. It doesn't exist. You don't actually have to eat them to live a healthy life. Now, they're good for many reasons, fiber, they're good for phytochemicals and so forth. Fats you do need, but only small amounts, gram, milligram amounts of omega-3s and some omega-6s. protein you need in very large amounts,

60 to 150 or 200 grams, depending on your size, a protein is a lot. And the new guidelines finally move beyond the sort of the bare minimum to prevent deficiency diseases, and they recognize what we need to thrive. Now, for most people, that means prioritizing protein in every meal, especially breakfast, because people eat dessert for breakfast in America, French toast, waffles, pancakes, sweetened yoghirts, croissants, muffins, bagels, I mean, the list goes on.

And that means eggs, it means fish, it means meat, it means beans, it means dairy, if you can tolerate it. And if you're trained training and you try to preserve muscle or build muscle as you age, protein is even more important. Now, the next question I got was, are whole grains really necessary for everyone? And again, this is where personalization really matters. Whole grains are not an essential human food. There were no grains in our diet before the agricultural revolution. They just were not part of our evolutionary diet for almost 200,000.

years. So humans can do fine without them. They can, however, be fine to eat, but they're not essential for everyone. And if you're metabolically healthy and you can tolerate them well, and you eat them as part of a food matrix where you're not spiking your blood sugar with protein and fat, they can't actually be part of a good diet. But for people with prediabetes, insulin resistance, blood sugar issues, diabetes, even autoimmune diseases, you know, gluten can be a problem, whole grains can be a problem. You probably want to avoid them and see how you do. The key question isn't, are whole grains good, but you tolerate them well. Vegetables, beans, tubers are really foods

that provide better nutrients with fewer downsides than grains. Though I do eat grains from time to time, so I don't think they're taboo. I just think your body doesn't absolutely need them. So pay attention to how you feel, how you respond. Your body is the best doctor in the house. So pay attention. Next question we got was how do these guidelines apply to kids and families?

Well, for kids, the most important thing isn't about following rules. It's about building a foundation. And that means prioritizing real old food, vegetables, quality protein, healthy fats, minimally processed carbohydrates, don't aim for perfection and for consistency. Picky eating is normal in America particularly, and real life can be messy. But what's add is most is reducing ultra-processed foods or just getting rid of them, don't introduce them, avoiding sugary drinks, modeling healthy habits at home. I mean, kids learn more from what we eat than what we say.

So small study changes make a big difference over time. And you know, people say, well, you know, my kids don't want to eat this. they want to eat that, all it was mac of cheese, a pizza, blah, blah. That's because you fed it to them and they're addicted to it. What do you think kids eat in Japan?

They eat raw fish. They eat seaweed, okay? Kids eat whatever in front of them and what they're growing up eating. So I think people have to just understand they have to change their palate. Now, next question was, do the guidelines still recommend limiting saturated fat

and should we? Well, yes, the guidelines still recommend limiting saturated fat, but the science here is more nuanced than the rule suggests. As I said before, saturated fat is an inherently bad. Context matters. The source of the fat,

the overall diet, but replaces it all play a role. So saturated fat from whole foods like yogurt, cheese, meat, behaves very differently in the body than when it's replaced with all refined carbs and processed foods or when eaten with those foods. So instead of kind of obsessing over fat grams and percentages, just focus on food quality and what you're eating it with. So if you're eating a lot of saturated fat with a lot of starch and sugar, bad,

you're eating with, you know, protein and vegetables, no problem. So butter on your bread bad, butter on your broccoli, good. Whole foods matter far more than isolated nutrients. Now, one of the things that was hinted at, but not explicitly pointed out in the guidelines, was that our policy matters and that our current health crisis is not a personal failure. That it's not your fault if you overweight. It's not your fault to be of diabetes or you have heart disease. It's because we live in a toxic food environment.

It's a toxic nutritional wasteland, the food swap, it's bad. And so how did we get there? We got there through policies. We got there through policies by our government that were influenced by the food industry. So chronic disease is a systemic problem. It's not a moral failing. There's decades of food policy that have favored cheap calories that subsidized corn and soy and wheat and a lot of the stuff that's turned into ultra-processed food and highly processed food.

We've been focusing on treatment, not prevention. All that needs to change. You know, we need to change our subsidies to support health. healthier food. I mean, we spend 98% of our subsidies on commodity crops that are turned into highly processed or ultra-processed food and 2% on fruits and vegetables. Food labeling laws need to change. Right now, if you read a food label, you have to be a PhD nutrition. It's spent to confuse you. Food industry has their hand in it. We need to have really clear labeling laws so people know, like in South America, it's got black stop signs on the front of the package if it's got bad

crap in it. School lunch programs, thank God we have the new guidelines because they're going to influence those programs. Those will change. Healthcare reimbursement needs to change. We're now, actually, this is really exciting. Medicare has just announced a hundred million dollar, $100 billion for studying functional lifestyle medicine to address chronic disease. This is a revolutionary. It's going to be 30 studies over three years, each funded about $3.5 million in order to help find out if certain approaches that are different than what we do now are. better at improving health outcomes or lowering costs or both. And once they find that that works, they're going to pay for it. In other words, insurance will pay for, Medicare will pay for it.

That's really exciting. So food fix uncensored, a new book that I wrote with my wife, actually my old book that we rewrote, kind of updated it, really describes how food policy shapes what ends up on your plate and how our health is. So it also shows what policies need to change and also how you as an individual can make better choices inside a broken system. So the guidelines are amazing. To summarize, they're a beginning of a new revolution in food and food policy.

They're a critical shift for the first time in decades. Federal nutrition policy is beginning to reflect the science, acknowledging the harms of highly processed food, the importance of good quality protein, the reality that, you know, one diet shouldn't fit everybody, the metabolism matters, and low-carb diets can be a therapeutic diet. This is all huge.

Now, these guidelines are, a foundation, we still have more work to do, that we require more research, we need more scientific integrity and all that matters. But for the first time, in a long time, this is real progress, and I'm excited about it. And in the future, the nutrition has to go further. We need to spend billions of dollars on nutrition research. It's so important because food is the biggest cause of our chronic disease epidemic. It's the biggest cure. It accounts for 90% of the chronic illnesses we see today, which is 90% of our health care bill, of $5 trillion. Really important. We need to study personalization, nuances, prevention, not just population averages.

So here's how I encourage you to use these guidelines. First, focus on food quality quality, reduce ultra-processed food and highly processed food, or get rid of it. I don't really eat it. It's not actually food. I said this before, but the definition of food, I encourage you to go look it up in the dictionary is something that helps support the growth and health of an organism. And by definition, these things are not food. They make you sick. They don't support your health. So really, really, important to understand that. I mean, I won't eat a sicker's bar. I'll eat a chocolate bar, but I won't eat a weird, highly processed Dorito, but I might have corn chip. You know, just realize what you're eating, okay? Treat the guidelines as a starting point. They're not a rigid rulebook,

and it's really important to listen to your body and be smart about what you're eating and try to put real food in your body, which is finally what the dietary guidelines say, which they should have said for decades. Now, if you want to go deeper into how policy and food policy shapes what ends up on your plate, I really encourage you explore all that in my book, Food Fix Uncensored, that I wrote with my wife, Briata, is coming out next month. And if you're looking for practical ways to personalize your diet, make sure to check out my free nutrition 101 guide, link in the show notes. The science is finally catching up, and now it's up to us to apply it thoughtfully, personally, and a way that actually supports long-term health. Thanks for joining me for office hours. I love

love diving into these topics with you. Remember, you are the CEO of your own health, and every choice you make can move you closer to healing and vitality. I want to keep these episodes as relevant and useful as possible, so tell me, what do you want to explore next? What questions are you wrestling with? What breakthroughs are you chasing? Share your ideas in the comments on social media or through the link in the show notes. I'm listening. Until next time, keep taking charge, keep asking questions, and and keep showing up for your health. If you love this podcast,

please share it with someone else you think would also enjoy it. You can find me on all social media channels at Dr. Mark Hyman. Please reach out. I'd love to hear your comments and questions. Don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe to the Dr. Hyman show wherever you get your podcasts. And don't forget to check out my YouTube channel at Dr. Mark Hyman for video versions of this podcast and more.

Thank you so much again for tuning in. We'll see you next time on the Dr. Hyman Show. This podcast is separate from my clinical practice at the Ultra Wellness Center, my work at Cleveland Clinic, and Function Health, where I am chief medical officer. This podcast represents my opinions and my guest's opinions. Neither myself nor the podcast endorses the views or statements of my guests. This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional care by a doctor or other qualified medical professional.

This podcast is provided with the understanding that it does not constitute medical or other professional advice or services. If you're looking for help in your journey, please seek out a qualified medical practitioner. And if you're looking for a functional medicine practitioner, visit my clinic, the Ultra Wellness Center at ultraweilnesscenter.com, and request to become a patient. It's important to have someone in your corner who is a trained,

licensed healthcare practitioner and can help you make changes, especially when it comes to your health. This podcast is free as part of my mission to bring practical ways of improving health to the public. So I'd like to express gratitude to sponsors that made today's podcast possible. Thanks so much again for listening. Thank you.