A Companion Resource for the 2025-2030 Dietary Guidelines

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Every five years, the USDA and DHHS release a new set of Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGAs), informed by a multi-step federal review of diet and health research.

As a Professor of Nutrition and contributing Cengage author, I developed a 2025-2030 DGA companion resource that will help introductory nutrition instructors engage their students in conversations about the new guidelines. Inviting students to identify commonalities and differences across guidelines acts as a great discussion-starter and builds critical thinking skills.

This resource will evolve and expand over the coming months as MindTap Courses for Nutrition integrate the new guidelines.

Why this resource matters

Summarizes changes

The resource guides instructors in comparing the 2025-2030 DGA with previous guidelines and other international guideline sets.

Ties to purpose and process

Encouraging students to evaluate how nutrition-related evidence informs nutrition guidance helps foster scientific thinking. I’ve included a link to the Scientific Foundation for the Dietary Guidelines for Americans to explain the process used for developing the 2025-30 DGAs. A table beginning on the second page of this report summarizes which Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee recommendations were accepted and which were rejected.

Putting this resource into action

1. Update examples and case studies

• Update recommended dietary patterns and messaging so students can practice applying current guidance.

1. Create short, guideline-focused activities

• Add a 10–15 minute in-class exercise where students translate a guideline recommendation into a client-friendly plan or classroom infographic.

3. Add one of the following classroom-ready activities to your lesson

• Assign two student teams to outline how a specific guideline recommendation should be adapted for different life stages and/or groups.
• Have students practice explaining a guideline recommendation in plain language, tailoring it to a client’s preferences.
• Have students convert a guideline paragraph into a one-page handout for community distribution.
• Ask students to compare the New Pyramid to MyPlate and other visual graphics around the globe that summarize nutrition messages.

Example prompts: What are the commonalities and differences? What do consumers need to apply the graphic to their eating patterns?

Final takeaway

It’s my hope that this resource will help you save time on content updates and guide conversations with students around the new guidelines.

Written by Virginia Gray, Ph.D., RDN, Professor of Nutrition and Department Chair in the Department of Family and Consumer Sciences at California State University Long Beach