Week in Review: Big dietary guideline win 

The 2025-30 Dietary Guidelines for Americans were released this week, and they are a huge win for the fresh produce industry. New government dietary guidelines say ‘eat real food’ – Blue Book 

Diet-related chronic diseases are among the biggest problems in our country, and we’ve long known that higher consumption of fruits and vegetables is a solution. 

For far too long, the dietary guidelines have been influenced by food companies producing less healthy items, deemphasizing whole food and real food. 

And they’ve been confusing. The MyPlate guidance, suggesting half one’s plate be fruits and vegetables, was a positive movement, but modern society doesn’t always eat with plates at sit-down meals. 

The new guidelines are plain and clear: eat real food. 

Nothing is more real than whole fruits and vegetables. 

“Eat a wide variety of whole, colorful, nutrient-dense vegetables and fruits in their original form, prioritizing freshness and minimal processing,” the guidelines say. 

It recommends three vegetable servings and two fruit servings per day. Five a day has a familiar ring to it. 

It also recommends eating them throughout the day, acknowledging that snacking is the norm for Americans. 

We should support the other recommendations, such as prioritizing protein, healthy fats, and limiting highly processed foods and added sugar. 

Fruits and vegetables compete for stomach share with these less healthy foods, and we can’t be afraid to label them as such. 

This is a good start, but Americans have a long way to go, as less than 1 in 10 Americans meets the minimum daily consumption of fruits and vegetables.  

The federal government has also not followed its own guidelines in feeding programs for generations, and this has to change. 

The International Fresh Produce Association has worked with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the U.S. Department of Agriculture on the guidelines, and it’s good to see position results. IFPA highlights fruits and vegetables’ role in 2025–30 Dietary Guidelines for Americans   – Blue Book 

As an industry, we have to keep up the pressure on the government to increase access to fresh fruits and vegetables in feeding programs, including school nutrition, Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), military feeding programs, and more. 

The government needs to make private food-as-medicine programs more accessible and reduce the barriers faced by growers and importers to supply what should be rising demand for fresh produce. 

And then the produce industry needs to deliver, with high quality, more efficient production, and innovation, and retail and foodservice partners need to do their part as well. 

The new dietary guidelines flipped the pyramid, and that’s what Americans need to do with their diets. 

There will be winners and losers in the food world, but the winners in the long run will be Americans who follow the guidelines.