Guidance from health and human services secretary contradicts decades of dietary recommendations

Robert F Kennedy Jr, the health and human services (HHS) secretary, is planning to issue guidance encouraging Americans to eat more saturated fats, contradicting decades of dietary recommendations and alarming experts.

“My response and sort of counsel to myself was to stay calm, and let’s see what happens, because there was no indication given as to how, why, when this potential shift would occur,” said Cheryl Anderson, an American Heart Association board member and professor at the University of California, San Diego’s school of public health and human longevity science.

Exclusive: Guardian analysis finds wide geographical disparities in fatalities linked to the public health crisis

• How Chicago succeeded in reducing drug overdose deaths

Overdose deaths continued to rise in some communities across the US even as they declined nationally in 2024, according to an exclusive data analysis by the Guardian, which found wide geographical disparities in fatalities linked to the public health crisis.

The revelation comes just months after public health officials heralded a 27% drop in overdose deaths, a feat that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) attributed to factors including expanded access to the overdose-reversal drug naloxone and substance-use treatment, and shifts in the drug supply.