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Federal health officials are no longer advising how many alcoholic drinks are safe for Americans, instead\u00a0urging people\u00a0to “consume less alcohol” and abstain altogether if they have certain health conditions.<\/p>\n
The new advice from\u00a0Robert F. Kennedy Jr.\u2019s Department of Health and Human Services is an about-face from a\u00a0longstanding government guideline\u00a0that said drinking in moderation meant two drinks a day for men and one drink a day for women.<\/p>\n
Scientists, nutritionists and advocates say the new guidance is too vague for people to apply to their everyday lives, and criticize the Trump administration for missing an opportunity to warn about alcohol\u2019s link to cancer and other health problems.<\/p>\n
\u201cAny level of drinking has some risk, and it increases with more drinking,\u201d said Christopher Kahler, the director of the Center for Alcohol and Addiction Studies at Brown University. \u201cThere\u2019s no discussion of risk in the\u00a0guidelines now, just that drinking less is better for your health.\u201d<\/p>\n
For the first time, the committee that put together the bulk of the dietary guidance did not address alcohol themselves, according to Deirdre Kay Tobias, a nutrition professor at Harvard University who was on the committee. Instead, the Trump administration relied on advice from two outside committees to study how alcohol affects health.<\/p>\n
One study\u00a0found the risk of\u00a0breast cancer\u00a0increases with every drink a person consumes each day, among other things.\u00a0A draft\u00a0of the other report said the risk of dying from alcohol use \u201cbegins at very low levels of average use,\u201d and linked alcohol use to seven types of cancers.<\/p>\n
But the administration wrote in a document that it\u00a0chose not to “consider the findings”\u00a0of those two committees.<\/p>\n
Dr. Mehmet Oz, who runs the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said in a news conference Jan. 7 that alcohol\u2019s value comes from being a social lubricant that brings friends together to have a good time, but said the \u201cbest case scenario\u201d would be not drinking at all.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is alcohol in these dietary guidelines, but the implication is don\u2019t have it for breakfast, all right?\u201d Oz said. \u201cThis should be something done in a small amount and hopefully at some kind of an event that might have alcohol at it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n