RFK Jr to urge Americans to eat more saturated fats, alarming health experts [View all]

Robert F Kennedy Jr, the health and human services secretary, is planning to issue guidance encouraging Americans to eat more saturated fats, contradicting decades of dietary recommendations and alarming experts.

“My response and sort of counsel to myself was to stay calm, and let’s see what happens, because there was no indication given as to how, why, when this potential shift would occur,” said Cheryl Anderson, an American Heart Association board member and professor at the University of California, San Diego’s school of public health and human longevity science.

“The recommendation around saturated fat has been one of the most consistent recommendations since the first edition of the dietary guidelines.”

While Ronald Krauss, a professor of pediatrics and medicine at the University of California, San Francisco who has researched saturated fats extensively, found that saturated fats may be less harmful than previously thought, he believes if “[Kennedy] is actually going to go out and say, we should be eating more saturated fat, I think that’s really the wrong message”.

Kennedy has indicated that new dietary guidelines will “stress the need to eat saturated fats of dairy, of good meat, of fresh meat and vegetables … when we release those, it will give everybody the rationale for driving it into our schools”, according to recent reporting in the Hill.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/oct/25/rfk-jr-saturated-fats