by When Project 2025 began making headlines this summer, it was mostly about the ways in which the conservative “wish list” of policies for a future Trump administration would restructure the entire federal bureaucracy, deepen abortion restrictions and end add to the Department of Education.
But the document – a proposed mandate for the next Republican president authored by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank – outlines steps that would dramatically change food and farming, reversing recent progress to address excess ultra-processed foods in the United States. Among them: weakening the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), ending policies that consider the effects of climate change – and ending the US nutritional guidelines.
“This is a deregulation agenda,” said Marion Nestle, a professor of nutrition and food policy at New York University. “And what we know historically from deregulation is that it’s really bad for consumers, it’s bad for workers, it’s bad for the environment.”
Project 2025 proposes changes to the country’s food aid programs, such as Snap and the supplemental nutrition program for Women, Infants and Children (Wic), which Nestle believes is intended to dismantle those programs. It also calls for an end to support for school meals.
But one of the most prominent proposals calls for the next Republican president to end or reform the dietary guidelines. Those guidelines underpin all federal food policy, from school meals to Snap, Wic and other programs.
“There is no shortage of private sector nutrition advice for the public, and nutrition and dietary choices are best left to individuals to address their personal needs,” the document reads.
The food industry has long pushed the idea that chronic diet-related health conditions, like diabetes and obesity, are the result of individual choices — like not getting enough exercise. Today, nearly 42% of adults in the US are obese and about 12% have diabetes. But nutritionists stress that these conditions are not the result of a moral failure, but conditions caused by the ingredients and policies (such as aggressive advertising for children) that are being pushed by food companies.
Nestle sees it as one of many pro-business policies outlined in Project 2025’s agricultural provisions that give companies the confidence to prioritize public health over profit.
“There are twice as many calories available in the food supply as the average country needs. So the food industry is very competitive in terms of selling calories,” she said. “Republicans want to deregulate, and give those food companies every opportunity to make as much money as they can, regardless of the impact on health and the environment.”
Experts also fear the way Project 2025 could undermine the work being done by the Food and Drug Administration and the Department of Agriculture to limit the flow of ultra-processed foods into the US food supply.
Today, ultra-processed foods make up 73% of the US food supply, according to Northeastern University, and provide the average US adult with more than 60% of their daily calories. Although the science is still evolving, researchers are increasingly linking UPFs to a range of health conditions including diabetes, obesity, depression and certain cancers.
At the FDA, work is currently underway to develop a front-of-package label that would require corporations to print on the faces of products that would indicate when an item is high in sugar, fats, sodium or calories (the accurate label. still public). Although the label would not specifically indicate when a food is ultra-processed, it would likely apply to a high percentage of UPFs in the food system as many of them contain large quantities of these nutrients.
And at the USDA, members of the US dietary guidelines advisory committee are currently meeting and will make their recommendations for the 2025-30 dietary guidelines later this year. In considering the advice it will give to the USDA and the Department of Health and Human Services, the committee is also tasked with considering research related to UPFs. It is not clear what they will recommend – and whether that advice will feed into the 2025 dietary guidelines – but it is a significant development for the committee to even consider ultra-processing.
But while Project 2025 makes no specific references to front-of-package nutrition labels like those currently being considered by the FDA, Lindsey Smith Taillie, professor of nutrition and co-director of the World Food Research Program at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill , who says that the elimination of the dietary guidelines will inevitably affect them.
“It’s almost like they’re removing scientific evidence from federal food policy,” she said.
Even if Trump isn’t elected next month, Philip Kahn-Pauli, director of legislative affairs at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, says he’s “already seeing the impact of the policy recommendations in Project 2025 in Congress today.”
In approving funding for government agencies in 2025, the Republican-controlled House considered a bill that would “fundamentally” change the dietary guidelines process, he said in an emailed statement. The budget bill would, among other things, cancel the 2025 dietary guidelines that are currently being processed. Although that bill was abandoned in favor of a continuing resolution to fund the government, Kahn-Pauli said, “the fact that there was such a partisan attack” on the dietary guidelines “signals that there is a new focus on evidence-based policy that tighten”. He expects to see more attacks on the guidelines in the new year.
Across the food system, Nestle says, Project 2025 would promote industry due to climate, public health or welfare concerns: “The basic principle here is: don’t do anything that will reduce the industry’s profits.”
