Science, politics and personal accountability

One of the most significant obstacles facing the new dietary guidelines has little to do with their scientific content and much more to do with how they are perceived politically. Over time, nutrition guidance has become increasingly associated with specific political parties and administrations, leading many people to react to it through identity and allegiance rather than logic. When advice is seen as belonging to “one side,” it is often dismissed outright by the other, regardless of whether the underlying evidence has genuinely improved.

This is particularly problematic because, from a scientific perspective, the current guidelines do represent meaningful progress. They are more explicit about the harms of ultra-processed foods, more grounded in metabolic reality, and more honest about the failures of previous dietary approaches. Yet these improvements risk being overlooked not because they are flawed, but because the guidelines themselves have become entangled in political narratives that overshadow their substance.

The danger is that dietary guidance becomes a political weapon, reshaped or reframed with every change in leadership. When recommendations shift alongside electoral cycles, public trust erodes. People become confused, sceptical, and disengaged, unsure whether advice reflects evolving science or changing ideology. Instead of serving as a stable reference point, guidelines begin to feel provisional and unreliable.

In this environment, individual accountability becomes essential. When institutions are politicised and guidance is unstable, responsibility for health cannot be outsourced. No document, however improved, can account for individual metabolic differences or lived experience.

People must remain willing to assess outcomes, question recommendations that do not work for them, and adjust accordingly. Accountability does not mean rejecting guidance; it means refusing to surrender agency. In a landscape where nutrition advice is filtered through politics and power, personal responsibility is the only constant that allows progress to continue at the individual level.