Parents on RFK Jr.’s advice on sweets
New dietary guidelines from the Trump administration have some big asks of Americans, from prioritizing protein to avoiding highly processed food. The most onerous directive, though, was probably for moms and dads.
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins want them to stop giving their kids sugar until they turn 11.
That, says Keri Rodrigues, a mother of five boys and the president of the National Parents Union, is “completely unrealistic.” Her group, which has been critical of other administration policies, represents 1.7 million parents.
“Sugar is everywhere,” she said. “It’s in bread, it’s in all kinds of other things,” she said.
No one is saying kids can’t eat foods that contain natural sugar, such as bananas and fresh mango, but avoiding added sugar — which most everyone agrees should be limited — would require incredible diligence. The old rules, which most parents failed to abide by, only asked them to hold the line till their kids turned 2.
The new guidance, strictly followed, would mean a wholesale overhaul of most kids’ diets and the traditions of childhood. There’d be no more Halloween candy, ice cream cones at the county fair, Cracker Jack at the ballgame or even a peanut-butter and jelly sandwich.
The guidelines are the government’s declaration of war on added sugar, Kennedy said when announcing the new recommendations Wednesday, pointing to the high rates of obesity among American children. Approximately 1 in 5 American children and teens are obese, according to 2024 data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The new guidelines, spearheaded by Kennedy and Rollins, say that no amount of added sugar is recommended or considered part of a healthy diet.
The American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Medical Association and other health groups have praised the guidelines’ recommendations for Americans to avoid added sugar.
The new guidelines tell parents to avoid any added sugar for children 4 and under and stress that “no amount of sugar is recommended” for kids between 5 and 10. The previous guidelines, in addition to asking parents to avoid giving kids sugar till 2, recommended that added sugars remain under 10 percent of daily calories for kids older than that.
Consuming too much added sugar is linked to conditions such as weight gain and obesity, type 2 diabetes, and heart disease, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which in 2024 pointed to a 2021 survey showing that a majority of one-to-five year olds had consumed at least one sugary drink in the week prior to the survey.
A Department of Health and Human Services official said highly processed foods, which often contain added sugar, trigger something akin to addiction, and early exposure can make it difficult to resist eating too much sugar later in life. POLITICO granted the official anonymity because they were not allowed to speak publicly.
HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon said the dietary guidelines “are a guideline and recommendation for Americans.” He stressed that they were only a recommendation.
2026 Dietary Guidelines for Americans Food Pyramid | USDA
Dietary guidelines affect how federal programs like school meals are run, but Americans have never faithfully adhered to them.
Tina Descovich, a mother of five and the co-founder of Moms for Liberty, a conservative parents’ rights organization, said she thought it would be hard to comply with the new guidance once children start to attend school and play dates.
Descovich recalled her time as a Brevard County, Fla., school board member between 2016 and 2020. Parents often complained about sugar-laden breakfast foods the kids were served, she said, adding that she agreed that getting such foods out of schools should be a priority.
The new dietary guidelines won’t immediately offer parents any help there.
The next step in updating dietary guidelines for schools will happen at the Department of Agriculture, where officials will have to draft rules directing school administrators to align their food offerings with the new diet advice.
Food makers are likely to oppose efforts to zero out added sugar and may find allies among local officials given the magnitude of the change and the billions in food sales at stake.
“USDA needs to balance recommendations with the operational realities for schools, as well as consider how schools can effectively work to shift students’ current eating habits,” said a spokesperson for the School Nutrition Association, a trade group for professionals involved in serving school meals.
The spokesperson added that school meal programs are “already reducing added-sugar in school foods.”
Changes made under the Biden administration to cap added sugar in cereal, yogurt and flavored milk took effect in 2025 and schools will be subject to weekly limits on added sugar in school breakfast and lunch that start in July 2027. Those rules implement the 2020 dietary guidelines.
The Sugar Association — a trade group that represents sugar beet and cane growers, processors and refiners — opposes the Trump administration’s guidelines and argued that low added sugar recommendations can be overly restrictive.
“Misleading rhetoric “declaring war” on and creating unsubstantiated fear about a real ingredient like real sugar will not improve children’s health,” said Courtney Gaine, the association’s president and CEO, in a statement. “Real sugar — which comes only from sugar beets and sugar cane — plays many roles in food and cannot be removed without adding chemical additives like artificial sweeteners that large majorities of parents do not want in children’s food,” she added.
Kennedy has called his campaign to change the American diet: “Eat Real Food.”