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FDA Delays New ‘Healthy’ Definition and Rule To Comply With Trump Mandate

Feb. 25, 2025

The effective date is delayed until April 28 to give new agency officials the opportunity to review the rule.

The FDA has delayed the effective date of its new definition of “healthy” by two months to comply with Trump administration mandates that all new regulations must be reviewed.

While it was set to become effective today (Feb. 25), the final rule is delayed until April 28, according to the Dept. of Health and Human Services, the FDA’s parent. The delay will give new agency officials the opportunity to review the rule.

The compliance date in the final rule is not until 2028, and that remains unchanged at this point.

The voluntary rule, at least as of this writing, has just two components. To use the “healthy” claim, a food product needs to:

Contain a “certain amount” of food from at least one of the specified food groups (such as fruits, vegetables, fat-free and low-fat dairy etc.) recommended by the Dietary Guidelines.
Adhere to specified limits for saturated fat, sodium and added sugars.

Those "certain amounts" and limits, in terms of "food group equivalents" include:

1/2 cup of vegetables or fruits (with less than 2% of the daily value [DV] of added sugar, 10% of the DV of sodium and 5% of the DV of saturated fats.
2/3 cup of dairy (with less than 5% of the DV of added sugar, 10% of the DV of sodium and 10% of the DV of saturated fats).
3/4 oz. of grains (with less than 10% of DV of added sugar, 10% of the DV of sodium and 5% of the DV of saturated fats). Servings of meat, seafood, eggs, legumes and nuts or seeds also are recommended.

Two interesting inferences from the rule: Some products that have been considered healthy in the past no longer qualify. Those include fortified white bread, highly sweetened yogurt and highly sweetened cereal.

And there is a handful of foods that did not qualify for a healthy claim before but now can – generally, foods that have “good” fats (monounsaturated), such as “nuts and seeds, higher fat fish such as salmon [and] certain oils. In a bow to household budgeting and practicality, some peanut butters and canned fruits and vegetables also qualify.

About the Author

Dave Fusaro | Editor in Chief

Dave Fusaro has served as editor in chief of Food Processing magazine since 2003. Dave has 30 years experience in food & beverage industry journalism and has won several national ASBPE writing awards for his Food Processing stories. Dave has been interviewed on CNN, quoted in national newspapers and he authored a 200-page market research report on the milk industry. Formerly an award-winning newspaper reporter who specialized in business writing, he holds a BA in journalism from Marquette University. Prior to joining Food Processing, Dave was Editor-In-Chief of Dairy Foods and was Managing Editor of Prepared Foods.