Dr. Marty Makary dropped a bombshell admission that decades of FDA dietary guidance demonizing fat helped fuel America’s sugar addiction

Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary admitted that for nearly 20 years, the agency’s dietary guidance on fat was not just wrong, it was misleading, triggering a cascade of unhealthy eating habits that have devastated American health.

Speaking at a White House briefing on Wednesday alongside HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Makary unleashed a scathing indictment of the “medical dogma” that has governed American kitchens since the 1980s.

The Commissioner revealed that the government’s crusade against saturated fats, meat, butter, and eggs, was not only scientifically hollow but directly responsible for the explosion of the chronic disease epidemic.

“For decades, we’ve been fed a corrupt food pyramid that has had a myopic focus on demonizing natural healthy saturated fats, telling you not to eat eggs and steak, and ignoring a giant blind spot: refined carbohydrates, added sugars, ultra-processed food,” said Makary.

“Ironically, they took out the healthy, saturated fat and added sugar, and that was supposed to be healthier. We now have a chronic disease epidemic. The focus on fat has paralleled and ushered in an entire generation of kids with high insulin resistance and levels of inflammation never seen before in the human race.”

On Thursday, Makary doubled down on this new finding, criticizing the long-standing “low-fat” dogma that had led Americans to load up on sugar while avoiding healthy fats.

He suggested the narrative was kept alive, at least in part, to shield powerful corporate interests—including Big Pharma.

Most damning, Makary cited data showing that people who followed low-fat diets actually suffered higher rates of heart attacks than those who consumed healthy fats, directly contradicting decades of so-called “expert” federal nutrition advice.

Makary: 
“This is a component of health reform—and a powerful one. It’s been ignored for a long time. If you haven’t noticed, American nutrition has had a rough last 50 years, driven by bad advice and misinformation from medical dogma, from the establishment, and from the United States government. Today and yesterday, we are setting the record straight—telling people the truth about food.

[…]

The last 50 years have been dominated by medical dogma, really around one concept—a myopic focus that there was one bogeyman in the food supply: natural, saturated, healthy fats. If you avoided them, that was the secret to better health.

Well, as we kept saying this, the entire food supply moved to refined carbohydrates and ultra-processed foods. What did the medical establishment do? Double down: avoid more fat, consume less fat. And it was the same message as we watched a ballooning epidemic that now affects 40% of American kids—obesity, diabetes, and other health problems.

[…]

They suppressed the data for 16 years. Two other large studies failed to show an association. Finally, the study trickled out in the medical literature. Nobody noticed it. Those in the low-fat group had higher rates of heart attacks.

Why? Maybe because when you avoid fat, you have to pound food with carbohydrates—often ultra-processed carbohydrates stripped of fiber and chopped up into fractions like sugar. We created a generation of children with low protein, high carbohydrates, sugar addiction, and burdened with ultra-processed foods. And what did we do as a medical field? Drugged them at scale. Those days are over. We are telling people the truth about food.”

WATCH:

Makary’s comments arrive amid shifts in federal dietary policy under the current administration. New 2025–2030 Guidelines have de-emphasized fat limits, re-emphasized whole foods, and targeted added sugar reduction.

“These Guidelines return us to the basics,” Secretary Kennedy said. “American households must prioritize whole, nutrient-dense foods—protein, dairy, vegetables, fruits, healthy fats, and whole grains—and dramatically reduce highly processed foods. This is how we Make America Healthy Again.”

The guidelines stress clear, flexible recommendations grounded in up-to-date nutrition science:

Prioritizing Protein: While previous Dietary Guidelines have demonized protein in favor of carbohydrates, these guidelines reflect gold standard science by prioritizing high-quality, nutrient-dense protein foods in every meal. This includes a variety of animal sources, including eggs, poultry, seafood, and red meat, in addition to plant-sourced protein foods such as beans, peas, lentils, legumes, nuts, seeds, and soy.

Avoiding highly processed foods: For the first time, the Dietary Guidelines call out the dangers of certain highly processed foods – a common-sense and vital public health point. The guidance calls to “avoid highly processed packaged, prepared, ready-to-eat, or other foods that are salty or sweet” and “avoid sugar-sweetened beverages, such as soda, fruit drinks, and energy drinks.”

Avoiding added sugars: While previous Dietary Guidelines did not take a hard line against added sugar (especially for children), this guidance says, “no amount of added sugars or non-nutritive sweeteners is recommended or considered part of a healthy or nutritious diet” and calls on parents to completely avoid added sugar for children aged four and under.

Ending the War on Healthy Fats: The guidance calls for receiving the bulk of fat from whole food sources, such as meats, poultry, eggs, omega 3–rich seafood, nuts, seeds, full-fat dairy, olives, and avocados. When cooking with or adding fats to meals, the guidelines call for using the most nutrient-dense natural options with essential fatty acids, such as olive oil.

Heralding whole grains and avoiding refined carbohydrates: This guidance takes a firm stand to “prioritize fiber-rich whole grains” and “significantly reduce the consumption of highly processed, refined carbohydrates, such as white bread, ready-to-eat or packaged breakfast options, flour tortillas, and crackers.”

Including diets lower in carbohydrates to manage chronic disease: The guidance makes the science-based and common-sense recommendation that individuals with certain chronic diseases may experience improved health outcomes when following a lower carbohydrate diet.

Jim Hᴏft Jim Hᴏft is the founder and editor of The Gateway Pundit, one of the top conservative news outlets in America. Jim was awarded the Reed Irvine Accuracy in Media Award in 2013 and is the proud recipient of the Breitbart Award for Excellence in Online Journalism from the Americans for Prosperity Foundation in May 2016.

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