The New Dietary Guidelines Embrace Food Is Medicine—and Put Olive Oil Front and Center

The FDA and USDA recently released the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2025–2030 (DGA), prompting the usual mix of praise, criticism, and debate that accompanies any update to national nutrition policy. Some observers found fault with various aspects of the new guidelines, whether for what they include, what they omit, or how they frame healthy eating overall.

Notwithstanding the critics, there is much to applaud in the new DGA—particularly its clear alignment with the growing Food Is Medicine movement and its long-overdue recognition of olive oil as a foundational healthy food.

A Simpler, More Flexible Framework

Rather than prescribing specific named diets, the 2025–2030 DGA introduces a simplified, flexible food pyramid intended to “guide better choices, not dictate exact meals.” This shift reflects an understanding that Americans eat in diverse ways shaped by culture, tradition, access, and personal preference. At its core, the message is straightforward and evidence-based: eat real food most of the time.

The new upside-down pyramid emphasizes the roles of fruits and vegetables, healthy fats, protein, dairy and whole grains. While the guidelines move away from explicitly endorsing specific eating patterns such as the Mediterranean diet, the framework remains fully compatible with it—and with other dietary patterns grounded in whole, minimally processed foods.

A Clear Signal Toward Food Is Medicine

What most clearly distinguishes the new DGA from its predecessors is its emphasis on healthy fats—and, notably, olive oil. A cruet of a dark green extra virgin olive oil appears prominently at the center of the pyramid, which is a striking visual departure from the prior Dietary Guidelines that largely ignored olive oil altogether.

The Scientific Foundation for the Dietary Guidelines reinforces this message, stating: “When cooking with or adding fats to meals, prioritize oils with essential fatty acids, such as olive oil.” This guidance represents a meaningful step toward recognizing food not merely as fuel, but as a tool for promoting long-term health and preventing chronic disease.

In this way, the new DGA aligns closely with the principles of the Food Is Medicine movement. While olive oil has long been the cornerstone of the Mediterranean diet, the guidelines now recognize healthy fats like olive oil as foundational across all healthy eating patterns. Notably, for individuals with higher calorie needs, the DGA allows for up to eight teaspoons per day of healthy fats such as olive oil.

Two Final Wishes

The DGA pyramid clearly depicts extra virgin olive oil, the least processed and most polyphenol-rich form of olive oil. While all olive oils are healthy, EVOO stands apart for its antioxidant content and superior well-documented health benefits. So one can hope that future iterations of the Dietary Guidelines will make the distinction among olive oils explicit. Recognizing olive oil is an important step, but clarifying that extra virgin olive oil is the healthiest choice would make the guidance even stronger.

Second, one can also hope that the explicit recognition of olive oil's role in U.S. food policy will carry over to other areas, such as international trade policy, where one would have to question the wisdom in putting tariffs on healthy products that are not produced here in sufficient quantities to meet even 3% of U.S. demand, and in agricultural policy that will support investments by olive specialty crop farmers to grow more olives for olive oil in the U.S.