What's On Your Plate? A Dietitian Explains The New Dietary Guidelines

The federal government recently released updated dietary guidelines — and they represent some of the most significant shifts in nutritional thinking in decades. Gone are the old food pyramids and MyPlate models many of us grew up with. In their place is a framework that emphasizes whole foods, higher protein intake and a more nuanced view of dietary fat.

We sat down with Josie Austin, a registered dietitian at Franciscan Health Crawfordsville, to help make sense of what's changed, what it means for everyday eating, and how families of all kinds can put these new dietary guidelines into practice.

Key Takeaways: New Dietary Guidelines

• Anchor every meal with protein. New recommendations for adults call for 1.2 to 1.6 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight per day — roughly double the old guidelines for some people. Aim for about a quarter of your plate to be protein at every meal.
• Choose real food over reduced-fat food. When fat is artificially removed from a product, it’s usually replaced with sugar. Full-fat dairy and minimally processed cooking fats like olive oil, butter and beef tallow are now recognized as healthier options than their highly processed substitutes.
• Read the ingredients list, not just the front of the package. The word “enriched” before flour is your signal that a grain has been refined and stripped of its natural fiber. Look for whole-wheat flour as the first ingredient.
• Small changes stick. You don’t need to overhaul your diet overnight. Start with one meal or one snack, build on foods your family already enjoys, and progress from there.

What Drove The Shift Away From MyPlate And The Food Pyramid?

The new dietary guidelines represent a course correction toward less processed, more nourishing foods. As Austin explains, previous dietary guidelines were sometimes too lenient about what counted as a healthy choice.

“A lot of it is trying to reinforce wanting to go back to eating real food or eating more whole foods,” she said. “Across time, we’ve maybe gotten a little too lenient on what might fall into some of those categories. When we’re talking about yogurt that has added sugar to it, counting as a dairy, or refined grains making a larger impact on our plate than what would be ideal.”

Instead, Austin said, the new dietary guidelines emphasize choosing minimally processed nutritious foods, anchoring our meals with protein to help support not just avoiding deficiency and emphasizing metabolic health overall.

Why Is Protein Getting So Much More Attention?

One of the most notable changes in the new guidelines is a significantly higher recommended protein intake. Previous guidelines suggested 0.8 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight — just enough to prevent deficiency. The new recommendations raise that range to 1.2–1.6 grams per kilogram for adults, a shift Austin says is about more than just avoiding nutritional gaps.

“With the new recommendations being at 1.2 to 1.6 grams per kilogram of body weight for adults, that is really set to bolster metabolic health,” Austin said. “We're talking about around a quarter of the plate or so being protein.

“To make that make sense in terms of all these grams and kilograms, for a 150-pound adult, that would be aiming for about 82 to 109 grams of protein per day. With protein being the most satisfying food, if we're not getting enough of that in a meal or in a snack, that can be a pretty common feeling that you just feel hungry all the time.”

Protein is also the most satisfying macronutrient, meaning getting enough of it at each meal can help reduce that persistent feeling of hunger.

“An adult can typically see better results with closer to 30 grams per meal or a little more depending on the person,” Austin said. 

Austin recommends thinking about the "plate method": roughly a quarter of your plate should be protein at each meal, approximately the size of the palm of your hand (about three or four ounces). Examples include a three-ounce piece of chicken, a hamburger patty or a piece of fish.

What Are Some Easy Ways To Add Protein At Breakfast?

Breakfast is often where protein intake falls short. Eggs are a great option — Austin notes they are highly bioavailable — but variety matters. She offers some practical alternatives:

“Greek yogurt can be super handy,” she said. “You could always just do a Greek yogurt bowl with some granola or fruits. If you don’t necessarily like the texture of Greek yogurt, you could always experiment with blending it into milk and making it more into a smoothie, where that texture’s going to be a little bit lighter.”

Protein drinks and powders are also available, though Austin recommends prioritizing whole-food sources of protein first when possible.

When it comes to balancing animal and plant proteins, Austin notes that animal proteins are more efficient. You can get your daily protein target from a smaller volume of food. That said, plant-based sources like beans, nuts and seeds bring important benefits of their own.

“You’re going to generally benefit from getting a balance or a mix of both, especially since nuts and seeds, beans are going to be very anti-inflammatory and have good fiber. Nuts and seeds also offer healthy fats, and beans are naturally lower in fat,” Austin said.

Why Are The New Dietary Guidelines More Accepting Of Saturated Fat?

For decades, Americans were told to cut fat wherever possible. The new guidelines push back on that thinking. Austin points to an unintended consequence of the low-fat era:

“As we’ve seen with the previous recommendations to suck the fat out of everything, in a lot of instances, when we artificially remove that fat, it becomes a lot less satiating of a food,” Austin explained. “So even though we’re reducing that fat intake in the moment, we may end up going and eating a bunch of carbohydrate-rich snacks, which aren’t necessarily nutritious. When we take out the fat, other than it just showing up on the nutrition facts label, fat is going to contribute to the texture of those foods and different principles to how cooking and baking goes. So we have to replace it with something, and a lot of the times that’s been added sugar instead.”

The new guidelines now include olive oil, butter and beef tallow among recommended cooking fats. Butter and tallow, Austin explains, are generally less processed and more stable during cooking than many commercial oils, making them less likely to become inflammatory when heated.

This doesn’t mean unlimited saturated fat. Austin suggests a balanced approach.

“We don’t want to cook like Paula Deen and have a stick of butter in everything either,” she said. “It’s kind of striking that balance.”

How Can You Identify Whole Grains And Avoid Refined Ones?

Bread and grain labeling can be confusing — "whole wheat," "multi-grain," "honey wheat," and "sprouted" all mean different things. Austin’s simple advice: flip the package over.

“Beyond what’s initially on the front of the package, the most accurate way to know what you’re eating is to flip that thing over and look at the ingredients list,” she said. “If it’s something that has a flour to it, you want to find your first ingredient to be some sort of whole wheat flour or wheat flour. If you see any words with the flour, including ‘enriched,’ then that means it’s going to be a refined flour that has had to have vitamins and minerals added back to it, but you’re still not getting that fiber.”

Other excellent fiber sources include:

• Fruits
• Vegetables
• Beans
• Nuts
• Seeds
• Brown rice
• Quinoa
• Wild rice.

Austin reminds readers to increase water intake alongside fiber to avoid digestive discomfort.

How Can Parents Adapt These Dietary Guidelines For Children?

“When it comes to especially the protein part of things for the kiddos, you want to make sure that they’re getting protein at each meal,” Austin said. “They’re just not going to probably need as big of a volume as an adult does, understandably. Getting probably closer to that palm size in each meal for your kiddos is going to be great, while kid's meals can be closer to just around a palm size if that makes sense. Generally, that 3-ounce serving size (palm of the hand) would provide about 21 grams of protein. That’s going to support healthy growth and help stabilize their metabolic needs throughout the many changes and shifts of their age or their growing.”

Do Athletes Need More Protein?

Active individuals — especially those who lift weights or participate in strenuous sports — should aim for the higher end of the new protein range (1.4 to 1.6 grams per kilogram of body weight) to support muscle repair and recovery.

What Do The New Guidelines Mean For People with Chronic Conditions?

“Heart disease and diabetes are very closely related,” Austin said. “If we're stabilizing our blood sugar with more whole foods that have natural fiber, some natural fats to them, getting a good amount of protein, that's going to be easy on your metabolism and support your health goals.”

“If you are looking at a food and you flip over and look at the ingredients list on the back and there's a mile-long list of things in there, you're probably better off just finding some sort of more natural thing, more real foods, things that you're making at home,” Austin said. “Because regardless of what type of macronutrients are in there, your proteins, your fats, your carbs, either way, it's going to be more natural and nourish your body better.”

Diabetes

The new guidelines align closely with the plate method already used in diabetes education — half the plate non-starchy vegetables, a quarter protein, a quarter carbohydrates, with healthy fats. Austin notes the new guidelines reinforce the importance of stepping away from ultra-processed foods that can cause blood sugar spikes.

“This is already aligning pretty well with our new guidelines. It's just a little bit different imagery that we're putting with it,” she said. “Generally you're still doing the same things, especially if you're now emphasizing getting more whole foods and trying to step away from as many ultra-processed versions that kind of tend to leak into these different health trends.”

Heart disease

“The research that originally supported saturated fats being a big player in heart disease or thinking about our cholesterol panels isn’t necessarily as well supported or as black and white as we originally thought,” Austin said.

Austin gives eggs as an example: “We talked about in the past, you needed to limit your eggs or not eat at over 200 milligrams of cholesterol a day,” she said. “Our body uses cholesterol all day long for cellular function, making hormones. If you're not eating it, your body's still going to be making cholesterol, whether we get it in our diet or not. So your body uses it, it likes it.”

“We don't need to cook like Paula Deen and dive into fried foods, but living with heart disease or any other metabolic conditions, if you're choosing more minimally processed foods, that's going to be stabilizing your blood sugar better, which is another factor that can contribute to heart disease.”

How Do The New Guidelines Align With Popular Diets Like Mediterranean, Keto, Or Plant-Based?

The new guidelines have considerable overlap with many popular dietary approaches, including keto, Mediterranean and plant-based diets.

Keto and lower-carb diets align well, given the emphasis on protein and non-starchy vegetables. The Mediterranean diet’s emphasis on real, minimally processed foods and heart-healthy unsaturated fats also fits comfortably. Plant-based eaters can make it work too — it just requires more planning to hit protein targets, since plant proteins require greater volume.

As Austin puts it: “With all of those, there’s always some version of it that’s going to emphasize more whole foods.”

What Are The Biggest Barriers To Following The New Dietary Guidelines?

Cost and time are the two most common obstacles Austin hears from patients.

Her advice is to start small rather than overhaul everything at once. Budget-friendly, high-protein options include:

• Eggs
• Canned fish or chicken
• Rotisserie chicken
• Beans.

Austin emphasizes that incremental changes add up.

“I always recommend just taking one meal at a time or one snack at a time,” she said. “Don’t feel like that you have to overhaul everything you’ve ever done. Start with meals that you already have and that your family loves, and just finding the spots where you can add something in. Everything’s a step and a progression. It doesn’t have to be perfect right from the beginning.”

For More Information

Want to dig deeper into the new guidelines and how to apply them? Here are five trusted resources:

• Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA) — dietaryguidelines.gov | The official source for the 2025–2030 guidelines, including the full report and consumer-friendly summaries.
• Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics — eatright.org | Find a registered dietitian near you and access evidence-based nutrition resources for every age and health condition.
• American Diabetes Association — diabetes.org | Includes guidance on the plate method, carbohydrate management, and healthy eating with diabetes.
• American Heart Association — heart.org | Practical guidance on heart-healthy eating, including how to balance fat intake and reduce cardiovascular risk.

Have questions about how the new guidelines apply to you? Reach out to the registered dietitians at Franciscan Health to schedule an appointment.