I’m speaking at the Aspen Ideas Festival: Health. I’ll be interviewed by Helena Bottemiller Evich of FoodFix from 9:00 to 9:50 a.m.. Topic: “Making sense of nutrition science.”
by Marion Nestle
Jan
7
2025
The big fight over alcohol recommendations: not over yet
What are we to make of this?
The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s Review of Evidence on Alcohol and Health says moderate drinking
- Reduces all-cause mortality (moderate certainty)
- Reduces the risk of cardiovascular disease (moderate certainty)
- Increases the risk of breast and colorectal cancer (but can’t decide about others)
The Surgeon General, Vivek Murthy, says in his Advisory on Alcohol and Cancer Risk
- Consuming alcohol increases the risk of developing at least 7 types of cancer.
- The causal relationship between alcohol consumption and cancer is firmly established.
Let me try some context.
That alcohol is a risk factor for cancer has been known since the 1980s.
The Surgeon General’s conclusion is especially noteworthy for its lack of ambiguity. He says flat out: alcohol causes cancer, and 7 kinds no less.
In contrast, the NASEM report talks about low and moderate certainty for its conclusions.
Presumably, both reports were based on the same data.
Here’s what this is about.
At issue: what the 2025-2030 Dietary Guidelines will say about how much alcohol is safe to drink (if any).
Since 1990, Dietary Guidelines have said two standard drinks a day for men and one for women could be considered low risk.
But the 2020-2025 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, based on recent research indicating harm from any level of alcohol intake, said only one drink a day for both men and women was probably OK.
This alarmed the alcohol industry and other industries that profit from drinking. They convinced Congress and federal agencies to revisit the effects of moderate drinking.
The bottom line
While all this is going on, the moral is pretty clear: the less alcohol, the better.
Resources
Industry pressure to make sure Dietary Guidelines to not toughen alcohol restrictions
New York Times: What is Moderate Drinking?
Example of alcohol industry pressure on Dietary Guidelines
Rani Rabin has been right on top of this fuss. See, for example
- Surgeon General calls for cancer warnings on alcohol
- The battle over what to tell Americans about drinking
- US diet panel adds another researcher with alcohol industry ties
- Major study of drinking will be shut down