Americans could be officially asked to drink no more than two beers a week under tough new alcohol guidelines.
Biden’s health czar told that the USDA could change its alcohol recommendations to align with Canada’s, where people are recommended to have just two drinks a week.
dr George Koob – who admits to enjoying a few glasses of Chardonnay a week – said he’s been following Canada’s “grand experiment” with interest.
“If there are health benefits, I think people will start to reevaluate our current situation.” [in the US]he told .
Current US recommendations state that women can drink up to one bottle of beer, small glass of wine or shot of spirits per day, while men can have two.
However, these policies are up for review in 2025.
dr George Koob, head of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, said the US could lower its alcohol recommendations to match those in Canada
According to US guidelines, a beverage is defined as a drink that contains 0.6 fluid ounces of alcohol, which is equivalent to a beer, a 12 percent alcohol glass of wine, or a shot.
When asked in what direction the guidelines might change, Dr. George Koob, the director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA): “I mean, they’re not going to go up, I’m pretty sure of that.”
“So if [alcohol consumption guidelines] Go in any direction, it would be towards Canada.’
The guidelines are currently being reviewed, but updated versions may not be released until late 2025.
The debate about whether alcohol is good in small amounts has been going on for decades, but a growing body of research is showing that even small amounts can be harmful to your health.
A major study in June this year warned that drinking any amount of alcohol increases the risk of developing 60 diseases, including 33 that have never been linked to alcohol before.
Liver cirrhosis – scarring caused by persistent, long-term liver damage – stroke and cancer are well-known risks of excessive alcohol consumption.
But the Oxford University study, which analyzed data from half a million men living in China, also made links to other conditions, such as gout and cataracts.
dr Koob told that alcohol consumption has “no benefits” for physical health.
He said: “Most of the benefits that people attribute to alcohol, we think, have more to do with what someone eats than what they drink.”
“So it really has to do with the Mediterranean diet and the socioeconomic status that allows you to afford that type of diet and make your own fresh food and stuff like that.”
“With that in mind, most of the benefits on the health side disappear.”
However, he gave in to welfare, describing alcohol as a “social lubricant.”
dr Koob said he drinks about two glasses of white wine a week, usually a “buttery California Chardonnay.”
College girls are more likely to binge drink than boys for the first time in American history, Biden’s alcohol czar revealed earlier this year
Canada’s health authorities admitted their new rules might be a little “shocking” when they were announced earlier this year.
The review process for the 2025-2030 Dietary Guidelines for Americans has already begun, but the final version may not be released until late 2025.
America has recommended a safe limit of up to two drinks per day for adult males and one for females since the 1990s.
Studies in the past have suggested that drinking it might have some benefits — resveratrol in red wine has been linked to a reduced risk of cancer and improved heart health.
In recent years, research has gone in the opposite direction, warning that even consuming small amounts of alcohol is harmful to health.
A report released in 2020 by a federal committee of experts warned that alcohol increases the risk of cancer and called for the limits to be lowered to just one drink a day.
And in 2021, a report from the American Cancer Society warned that alcohol was the cause of up to 1 in 20 cancer cases in the US — or 25,000 a year.
Alcohol has been found to increase the risk of both rarer types of cancer, such as throat cancer, and more common types of cancer, such as breast cancer, which occurs most often in women.
Recent research involving 370,000 people has warned that drinking more alcohol leads to a 1.4-fold increase in the risk of heart disease.
High-level authorities, including the World Health Organization, have used the studies to warn that consuming even small amounts endangers a person’s health.
That growing body of evidence — and her own analysis of 6,000 studies — convinced Canadian health officials earlier this year to scrap their alcohol guidelines in favor of up to two drinks a week.
They previously suggested women could have up to 10 drinks a week, while men could drink 15 – similar to limits set in the US.
However, the move quickly drew criticism from some quarters, who accused authorities of “ignoring” the benefits of drinking – including how it can help in social situations and combat loneliness.
dr Dan Malleck, a health sciences expert at Brock University in Canada, said: “Alcohol affects many people’s lives in many positive ways.”
“We celebrate achievements, mark special occasions, bring wine to parties, meet up with friends, regret, relax, let off steam…these are important activities and part of the fabric and tone of many lives.”
Experts have previously argued that studies of alcohol’s risks are flawed because they fail to account for these social benefits.