Governments have spent decades issuing dietary guidelines, sponsoring public health campaigns, and encouraging consumers to cut back on sugary, salty, and fatty foods. Now they're moving beyond persuasion and adopting more aggressive measures to influence what people eat.
In an October 8 article titled "Nagging People to Eat Healthily Does Not Work," The Economist describes a growing international movement to tax unhealthy foods, restrict advertising, require warning labels, and regulate how supermarkets display and promote their products. Such measures are needed, officials argue, because the earlier approach failed to curb rising obesity rates.
The Economist notes, for example, that from 1992 through 2020 Britain adopted 14 national strategies to reduce obesity, comprising 689 individual policies. Most of these sought to educate consumers about healthy eating or improve access to healthier foods. Yet England's obesity rate doubled over roughly the same period.
The article treats the rise in obesity as evidence that these efforts failed, and its framing implies that governments need to go further. But the fact that obesity increased despite these initiatives doesn't tell us whether they were effective. (After all, obesity might have increased even faster without them.) More importantly, it doesn't follow that more intrusive interventions will improve health outcomes.
The Economist article cites a study that attributes Mexico's reductions in calories, added sugar, and saturated fat sold to mandatory warning labels. But these measures reflect changes in food purchases and product formulations, not demonstrated improvements in health. The article provides no evidence that the labeling requirements have reduced obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, or mortality.
And who decides which foods should carry warning labels, face higher taxes, or be restricted in where retailers can display them? The government has a poor track record in providing nutritional advice.
Terence Kealey, Bautista Vivanco, and I wrote a Cato Institute article earlier this year examining the history of federal dietary guidelines. We traced how officials adopted dietary recommendations grounded in scientific theories that were contested from the outset and inadequately supported by experimental evidence.
In 1977, the Senate Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs issued Dietary Goals for the United States, urging Americans to reduce fat and cholesterol intake while increasing carbohydrate intake. The recommendations reflected the prevailing hypothesis that dietary fat and cholesterol were major causes of cardiovascular disease.
But the evidence was far from conclusive. Researchers had challenged the correlations underpinning the hypothesis, and randomized trials available at the time had failed to show a mortality benefit from reducing dietary fat. The American Medical Association warned in 1977 that the evidence supporting universal dietary goals was inconclusive and that the recommendations could have harmful consequences.
Nevertheless, federal officials pressed forward.
For decades, government dietary guidance encouraged Americans to limit cholesterol-rich foods, including eggs and shellfish. It wasn't until 2015 that the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee concluded that dietary cholesterol was no longer a nutrient of concern for overconsumption.
Meanwhile, the campaign against dietary fat coincided with—and may have contributed to—significant shifts in American eating habits. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), from 1970 through 2003 per capita availability of grains rose by 43 percent, while added fats and oils rose by 63 percent. A separate USDA report found that per capita consumption of whole milk declined by 70 percent over that period, while consumption of lower-fat and skim milk increased by 140 percent. The USDA attributed this shift to warnings about saturated fat. Even after scientists raised concerns about trans fats, federal dietary guidelines continued to favor margarine over butter. Some margarines contained partially hydrogenated oils, which the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) later determined were no longer generally recognized as safe because of their cardiovascular risks.
These trends don't prove that government dietary advice caused Americans to change their diets. But government recommendations can influence what manufacturers produce and what consumers buy. When these recommendations are wrong, the consequences can be widespread.
Nutritional science is complex, and scientific consensus can shift. Government officials are no less susceptible to error than anyone else. Yet when the government endorses a particular dietary theory, its recommendations carry authority that can discourage competing approaches and magnify the consequences of mistakes.
The latest federal dietary guidelines illustrate this problem. The Trump administration's 2025–2030 guidelines introduced a new food pyramid that places greater emphasis on proteins and fats while discouraging refined carbohydrates. Whatever the merits of those changes, the reversal demonstrates how dramatically official dietary recommendations can shift.
The uncertainty doesn't end with fats and carbs.
Consider the growing campaign against ultra-processed foods. Numerous observational studies link higher consumption of these products to obesity, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and other adverse health outcomes. Yet researchers have not yet determined precisely which ingredients, additives, processing methods, or combinations of these factors account for many of those associations, or at what exposure levels.
Nor is there universal agreement on what constitutes an "ultra-processed" food in the first place. As Kealey, Vivanco, and I pointed out in another Cato article, the widely used NOVA classification system places a broad range of products in the ultra-processed category, including some fortified cereals and breads that provide valuable nutrients. Researchers have struggled to classify certain foods consistently. A 2025 systematic review identified six different systems for classifying highly processed foods, each with its own criteria.
Even the federal government recognizes the problem. In July 2025, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the FDA, and the USDA announced plans to develop a uniform definition of ultra-processed foods. Their request for information acknowledged that existing classifications can include nutritious foods such as whole grains and yogurt. In August 2026, HHS announced that the agencies had submitted a proposed definition for final review.
Some ultra-processed foods may indeed pose health risks. But broad categories can obscure important differences among products, and observational associations alone cannot tell us which ingredients or processing methods cause adverse health outcomes.
The Economist article reports that Britain is considering a system that would require supermarket chains to meet government-defined nutritional targets across their entire sales. Rather than merely informing customers about nutritional content, the government would make retailers responsible for altering the composition of what consumers buy. Supermarkets could comply by promoting certain foods, discouraging others, or pressuring manufacturers to reformulate their products.
Government nutrition authorities would thus have considerable power to influence what supermarkets sell and what consumers buy. If their nutritional assumptions prove mistaken, the consequences could affect millions of consumers.
Consumers benefit from accurate information about the ingredients and nutritional content of the foods they buy. But providing information is different from using government power to manipulate prices, restrict advertising, or pressure retailers to change what they sell.
Moreover, people have different nutritional needs, preferences, and attitudes toward risk. Some may willingly trade potential long-term health benefits for convenience, affordability, or the simple pleasure of eating foods they enjoy. These are choices individuals are entitled to make for themselves.
That raises a more fundamental issue. Even if officials had perfect knowledge of nutrition, why would that entitle them to dictate the dietary choices of competent adults?
Most people would likely oppose the government compelling patients with hypertension to take their medications, forcing sedentary adults to exercise, or prohibiting people from engaging in recreational activities that pose health risks. Why should eating be any different?
Adults should be free to seek dietary advice from physicians, nutritionists, researchers, or anyone else they trust—and to decide whether to follow it. They should also be free to disregard that advice, even if that might increase their health risks.
The post The Government Doesn't Know What's Best for You. Why Let It Decide What You Should Eat? appeared first on Reason Magazine.