Outdated dietary recommendations on fat, eggs and gluten, and their consequences for health and the healthcare system

• Fat: The low-fat doctrine leads people to replace fat with refined carbohydrates in particular – which has been shown to increase, rather than reduce, the risk of fatty liver disease or diabetes.
• Eggs: The DGE’s recommendation of one egg per week was lowered for environmental reasons—but is incorrectly presented to the public as a heart health warning.
• Gluten: EU labelling regulations establish a gluten-free diet as an implicit health claim. For people without coeliac disease, there is no scientific evidence to support this.
• Our demand: Health recommendations, health guidelines and EU requirements, regulations and laws must take the current state of research into account more consistently. An open scientific dialogue is necessary in order to identify and correct existing communication errors.

Berlin, 01 June 2026 – Nutrition myths do not originate solely on social media. Much of the most persistent misinformation about healthy eating comes from a far less obvious source: official guidelines, brochures published by statutory health insurance funds, and European labelling regulations. The Forum for Evidence-Based Preventative Health (FEBPH) and nutrition and health scientist PhDr. Sven-David Müller examine three such examples of institutionalised misinformation and reveal what the latest research actually says. After all, outdated recommendations have real-world consequences: misinformation from official sources influences the dietary choices of millions of people every day, contributes to the development of preventable chronic diseases and ultimately leads to increased costs for the healthcare system.

“Health recommendations issued by official bodies are not automatically evidence-based. When it comes to fat, cholesterol, eggs and gluten, current scientific evidence shows that institutional communication has lost sight of the evidence,” says Felix Große-Plankermann, Managing Director of the FEBPH. Public institutions bear a particular responsibility in this regard. Guidelines and recommendations that do not keep pace with the latest research can cause lasting damage to public confidence in health communication.

The low-fat lie: How decades of dietary guidelines have contributed to fatty liver disease and type 2 diabetes mellitus

Since the 1970s, one of the key messages in dietary guidelines, health insurance brochures, and government health campaigns has been: Reduce fat intake to prevent heart disease. The German Nutrition Society (DGE), the WHO, and numerous health insurance companies still recommend limiting fat intake to a maximum of 35 percent of daily energy intake and saturated fat to no more than 10 percent. Health insurance companies also advise that, in cases of elevated cholesterol levels, fat and cholesterol intake should be reduced in general.

What this message overlooks is that the DGE (German Nutrition Society) stated in its own guidelines as early as 2015 that there is no established link between total fat intake and the risk of coronary heart disease. What matters is not the amount of fat, but the quality of the fatty acids and, above all, what is used to replace fat in everyday life. Polyunsaturated fatty acids actually reduce the risk of heart disease. Refined carbohydrates, on the other hand—which many people instinctively turn to when cutting back on fat—increase the risk of fatty liver disease and type 2 diabetes.

Looking back, Harvard researchers described four decades of low-fat policies as a “failed experiment.” The consequences are measurable: rising rates of overweight and obesity, type 2 diabetes mellitus, and nonalcoholic fatty liver disease. “A high-fat diet can be very healthy if the right fats are chosen,” says PhDr. Sven-David Müller, a nutritional medicine scientist. “What the low-fat craze has left us with is a generation that fears fat and consumes sugar and white flour instead. We see the consequences for the liver and metabolism every day in our practice.”

One egg a week: a climate recommendation that is being interpreted as a warning for the heart

In March 2024, the DGE updated its dietary recommendations and lowered the recommended egg intake to one egg per week. Health portals, patient-focused media, and health insurance publications immediately began circulating the recommendation as a cardiovascular warning. What was hardly mentioned, however, was that the DGE explicitly justified the revision on the basis of environmental and sustainability considerations, not new medical findings. Regarding the health effects of eggs, the DGE itself acknowledged that the body of research is “neither clearly negative nor clearly positive.” Studies show that consuming no more than one egg per day does not increase the risk of heart attack and may even reduce it, according to Sven-David Müller’s summary of current studies.

Current scientific research paints a clear picture. The PROSPERITY Trial, one of the most comprehensive clinical studies to date on eggs and heart health, presented at the American College of Cardiology in 2024, examined the consumption of up to twelve eggs per week over several months and found no significant negative effects on lipid profiles. In the subgroup of older participants and people with diabetes, there were even signs of improved blood lipid levels. A study published in 2025 in the journal PubMed reached another important conclusion: It is not dietary cholesterol from eggs that raises LDL levels, but saturated fatty acids. Two eggs a day as part of a diet low in saturated fatty acids can actually lower harmful LDL levels.

“The current scientific consensus is that chicken eggs do not pose an increased cardiovascular risk for virtually anyone, including many high-risk patients such as diabetics,” says Sven-David Müller. “The fact that a sustainability recommendation is perceived by the public as a measure to protect heart health is a prime example of how institutional communication can unintentionally produce misinformation.”

Gluten-free for no reason: How EU regulations are making a diet with no health benefits socially acceptable

Gluten-free foods are a growing market worldwide. In Germany and throughout Europe, products may officially be labeled as “gluten-free,” as regulated by EU Regulation No. 828/2014. At the same time, the EU Health Claims Regulation (EC) No. 1924/2006 does not include any negative health claims regarding gluten for healthy individuals, so gluten-free status remains an implicitly desirable characteristic in the market. The labeling is not directed at any specific group: a medical indication on the part of the purchaser is not required.

The result: “gluten-free” has become established as an implicit health claim, fueled by influencers, product labeling, and health media that do not clearly distinguish between target groups. The evidence is clear: for people without celiac disease, wheat allergy, or confirmed non-celiac gluten sensitivity, there is no evidence of any health benefits from a gluten-free diet.

A study involving over 100,000 participants, published in the British Medical Journal, found no link between gluten consumption and the risk of coronary heart disease in healthy individuals. On the contrary, gluten-free products are often deficient in dietary fiber, folic acid, iron, zinc, magnesium, and calcium. Some studies also point to elevated heavy metal levels in people who follow a long-term gluten-free diet without a medical necessity. Of course, a gluten-free diet does not lead to weight loss and may even increase the risk of heart disease and type 2 diabetes.

Sven-David Müller, who has celiac disease himself, emphasizes the need for a clear distinction: “For people with celiac disease, a gluten-free diet is essential for survival. For everyone else, it is generally neither necessary nor beneficial, nor is it risk-free. The fact that this distinction has been lost in public discourse has real consequences for the population’s nutrient intake and risk of disease.”

Fat, cholesterol, eggs and gluten are prime examples of a structural problem in public health communication: recommendations that were once enshrined in guidelines, health insurance brochures and labelling regulations continue to be propagated, even though scientific research has long since provided more nuanced findings. The consequences are measurable – in rising rates of chronic diseases, overweight and obesity, as well as in growing mistrust of institutional health messages. FEBPH and PhDr. Sven-David Müller are calling for a more consistent updating of official recommendations based on the latest research.