PediatricDigest: October 2026

By Marion Nestle

October 01 2026

Texas’ dietary guidelines. “Eat real food, y’all!”

Jerry Mande of Nourish Science tipped me off on this one. Texas wrote its own dietary guidelines. He judges them as “pretty good and from Texas, y’all.”

Indeed they are.

The 2025-2030 dietary guidelines are a mess and pretty much unusable. Perhaps coincidentally, the Texas legislature told nutritionists to write guidelines for Texans.

The result:

They set the guidelines on three pillars:

Foods without a lot of processing are best for your body.
How you prepare food matters.
There are many ways to eat healthy.

They were produced by the Texas Nutrition Advisory Committee.

The Texas Legislature added Health and Safety Code, Chapter 119B, to establish the Texas Nutrition Advisory Committee (TNAC) in 2025. Statute tasks TNAC with:

Examining the impact of nutrition on human health and the connection between ultra-processed foods and the prevalence of chronic diseases;

Providing an independent review of scientific studies analyzing the effects of ultra-processed foods on human health;

Providing education on the effects of ultra-processed foods on human health; and

Developing and maintaining dietary and nutritional guidelines.

I don’t know any of the members of the Advisory Committee but high marks to them. They did all this in a thoughtful, systematic way and produced guidelines well substantiated by current scientific evidence.

Take a look at the link to the committee. That page provides loads of useful information about the process as well as links to educational materials.

Go Texas!

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