Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"September 10, 2026 6 min read
Add topic to email alerts
Receive an email when new articles are posted on
Please provide your email address to receive an email when new articles are posted on . “
data-action=”subscribe”>
Subscribe
We were unable to process your request. Please try again later. If you continue to have this issue please contact customerservice@slackinc.com. Back to Healio Key takeaways: The 2025-2030 Dietary Guidelines for Americans emphasize total protein intake and red meat, both of which have been linked to fibrosis risk. Clear, evidence-based guidance on alcohol consumption was omitted. Several dietary elements recommended in the 2025-2030 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, including total protein intake and red meat, have been linked to steatotic liver disease and fibrosis, analyses showed. Conversely, other components that were removed from previous guidelines \u2014 including increased intake of greens, beans and seafood or plant proteins, as well as clear limitations on alcohol consumption \u2014 were deemed protective for liver health.
\u201cThis message of eating more protein is making a big impact on people\u2019s diet,\u201d Nicholas Dunn, a medical student at University of Missouri-Kansas City, told Healio. \u201cYou can even see that some varieties of Doritos have added protein. \u201cWe should do our best to spread the message of what kind of protein people should be eating, and how much alcohol they should be consuming, because we want to minimize the risk for liver disease.\u201d As Healio previously reported, the new guidelines continue to recommend that Americans include high-quality protein, healthy fats, whole foods, and fruits and vegetables in their diet, and limit highly processed foods. However, the guidance removed clear, evidence-based alcohol consumption limits \u2014 no more than two drinks per day for men and one drink per day for women \u2014 and failed to address evidence linking alcohol and cancer. Ashwani K. Singal Dunn worked with Ashwani K. Singal, MD, MS, FACG, FAASLD, a transplant hepatologist at Trager Transplant Center, professor of medicine and director of clinical trials in hepatology at University of Louisville School of Medicine, and other researchers to evaluate the relationship between several of these dietary components and steatotic liver disease, fibrosis and cirrhosis. They analyzed data from 10,944 adults in the 2017-2023 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, for whom vibration-controlled transient elastography and 24-hour dietary recall were available. The researchers calculated Healthy Eating Index (HEI)-2020 component scores and energy-adjusted z-scores for food groups featured in the new guidelines. In addition to greens, beans and seafood or plant-based protein, increased consumption of total fruit, whole fruit, vegetables and whole grains was associated with lower odds of steatotic liver disease and fibrosis. Red or processed meats, sodium, total protein, saturated fat and added sugars were linked to greater prevalence of these outcomes. Limited alcohol use was \u201cstrongly protective\u201d for all liver outcomes, the researchers wrote. Healio spoke with Dunn and Singal about the guidelines\u2019 messaging on protein and alcohol consumption, and how clinicians can offer dietary counseling for patients with existing liver disease. Healio: What were your expectations going into this analysis? Did anything surprise you, and if so, what? Dunn: We had an open mind going into this, but we thought more protein could potentially mean less fat and carbs, which is a good thing. What surprised us the most was an analysis suggested by a reviewer, who explicitly asked us to break down protein into subsets by source. For the results, we saw a clear hierarchy: Plant-based protein is better than seafood protein, which is better than poultry, with red meat being the worst. Healio: The guidelines put greater emphasis on total protein intake, but your analysis found the type of protein consumed matters. Are we giving patients protein advice that\u2019s too general? Dunn: What we found in our data was that high protein intake was associated with a higher risk for liver disease. It\u2019s not that protein itself was inherently bad; it\u2019s that when people are consuming so much protein, they usually aren\u2019t eating lots of lentils or salmon. They\u2019re eating a lot of red meat, and we found that red meat was associated with liver diseases. Such advice can be overly simplistic. The previous HEI, based on the DGA-2020, is more balanced. It assigned five points toward protein intake and another five points toward plant- and seafood-based protein intake. The current DGA-2025 no longer mentions protein sources. In fact, it implicitly promotes red meat by placing a picture of a very large ribeye steak in the center of the page. Singal: In the context of liver disease, we were pleasantly surprised to see this observation that red meat is more harmful. When we see patients in the clinic with liver disease and cirrhosis, we generally recommend eating more protein. But we advise eating vegetable- or white meat-based protein and avoiding red meat-based protein. That\u2019s because red meat-based protein worsens liver disease, as documented in this study, and for patients with advanced fibrosis and cirrhosis, the amino acids in red meat are more ammoniogenic. Healio: For clinicians treating patients with metabolic dysfunction-associated liver disease, should the focus shift from how much protein to eat to where that protein comes from? Dunn: That seems to be a very reasonable recommendation. The level of evidence is not as strong, since it\u2019s all cross-sectional, but most Americans are not at risk of having too little protein. It may seem reasonable to be more selective toward protein sources and to favor pro-plant and seafood options. While I think we should still pay attention to how much protein patients are eating, we certainly should also put the spotlight on what kinds of foods they are eating to get that protein. Singal: This is an area where we could compare vegetable vs. animal sources of protein in a randomized controlled trial of patients with MASLD. This was observational and cross-sectional data \u2014 would randomized data show the same findings? In more fibrotic or cirrhotic patients,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3639,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3638","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/drsoniafawad.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3638","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/drsoniafawad.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/drsoniafawad.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drsoniafawad.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drsoniafawad.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3638"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/drsoniafawad.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3638\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drsoniafawad.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3639"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/drsoniafawad.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drsoniafawad.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drsoniafawad.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Healio](\"https:\/\/www.healio.com\/~\/media\/h5\/feature\/news\/publogos\/hgld\/healio_gastro.svg?la=en&h=40&w=152&hash=2C654A538F2E250F5183D42A89FE0EC0\")
\n <\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n