Perspectives on the Protein Recommendations in the 2025-2030 Dietary Guidelines for Americans

The 2025-2030 Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA) introduced substantial controversy by diverging from long-standing practices and many scientific recommendations of the 2025 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee (DGAC). The final guidelines promote dietary protein intake of 1.2 to 1.6 g/kg/d. These recommendations rely on a rapid systematic review of randomized controlled trials focused on weight-management outcomes and, to a lesser extent, a narrative review on nutrient adequacy. Recognizing protein as a component of a healthy diet is consistent with recent editions and a strength of the 2025-2030 DGA. However, the 2025-2030 DGA emphasizes a single dimension of the evidence base and gives limited attention to the relationship between protein intake and risk for, or management of, diet-related chronic disease, including cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, chronic kidney disease, cancer, and bone disease. The scientific basis underlying the new protein guidance was, in our assessment, insufficiently comprehensive while also departing from the DGA process to be food based and not nutrient based in the context of protein. These recommendations also lack sufficient clarity to distinguish between varying dietary macronutrient strategies for managing body weight in individuals with overweight or obesity and the specific protein requirements linked to the physiological roles of individual amino acids. The Scientific Foundation for the 2025-2030 DGA states that the recommendations were developed independent of equity and inclusion, raising practical concerns with how new higher protein targets will be interpreted and applied across diverse populations and federal nutrition programs. In this Perspective, we summarize the new protein recommendations, compare them with past DGA editions, the Scientific Report of the 2025 DGAC, and current population-level protein intake patterns, as well as highlight strengths and areas needing additional clarity or research. Central to our perspective is the view that evidence derived from weight loss studies does not provide a sufficient scope of evidence to support a universal dietary protein recommendation for all Americans across the lifespan.