Hardly a day passes without a new study, and an ensuing round of headlines, sounding the alarm on ultraprocessed foods.

This wide-ranging category — including sodas, processed meats and many breakfast cereals, snack foods, frozen meals and flavored yogurts — has been linked to a range of health issues such as obesity, Type 2 diabetes, heart disease, gut conditions and depression.

So it may come as a surprise that when a committee of 20 of the country’s leading nutrition scientists met in late October to preview their recommendations for the next edition of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, they said that there was not enough evidence to steer people away from the foods.

New limits on ultraprocessed foods, which make up a large share of what U.S. children and adults eat, could dramatically shift Americans’ diets, experts say. The dietary guidelines are used to set standards for federal food programs and inform how doctors counsel their patients about nutrition.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Department of Health and Human Services will ultimately issue the guidelines, which are slated for release by the end of 2025. It’s unclear how Donald Trump’s return to the White House may affect them.

But the conclusions presented last month suggest such a policy could be unlikely.

Why didn’t the committee make a recommendation?

Part of the committee’s job was to review the research on ultraprocessed foods and then summarize those findings in a report they will submit to the federal agencies by December.