Biden's alcohol czar warns new guidance could be 2 beers a week

Publish date: 2024-08-21

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What the ale?

Americans could soon be advised to limit themselves to just two drinks a week, a top health official warned Thursday.

President Biden’s alcohol czar, Dr. George Koob, told the Daily Mail that the USDA could revise its alcohol recommendations to match Canada’s guidelines.

In January, the Great White North began urging residents to limit their alcohol consumption to two drinks per week.

Since the 1990s, the US has recommended women limit themselves to one drink per day and men to two drinks per day.

The USDA recommends no more than one alcoholic drink or shot a day for women and two for men. Stephen Yang
The US government may tighten its alcohol guidance to match Canada’s recommendations. Stephen Yang

However, this guidance is up for review in 2025. 

“If there’s health benefits, I think people will start to re-evaluate where we’re at [in the US],” Koob told the Daily Mail of Canada’s “big experiment” with its alcohol guidance.

“So, if [alcohol consumption guidelines] go in any direction, it would be toward Canada.”

Koob, the director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, noted there are “no benefits” to physical health from drinking alcohol.

“Most of the benefits people attribute to alcohol, we feel they really have more to do with what someone’s eating rather than what they’re drinking,” he explained.

“So it really has to do with the Mediterranean diet, socio-economic status, that makes you able to afford that kind of diet and make your own fresh food and so forth.”

President Biden’s alcohol czar, Dr. George Koob, said the US may recommend that Americans consume no more than two drinks a week. AFP via Getty Images

A Mediterranean diet — which is high in fats and proteins, but low in carbohydrates — is touted as an overall healthy diet.

The lifestyle has been said to protect against inflammation and heart disease.

Socio-economic status has also been linked to health.

Poverty is the nation’s fourth-leading cause of death, killing an estimated 183,000 Americans 15 and older in 2019, according to findings published in April in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Americans are drinking at alarming rates, with a recent report finding the country is consuming as much alcohol as in Civil War days. REUTERS

“With this in mind, most of the benefits kind of disappear on the health side,” said Koob, who confessed to enjoying a couple of glasses of Chardonnay a week.

He did admit the social benefits of alcohol, describing it as a “social lubricant.”

His remarks follow several reports warning that Americans are consuming alcohol at an alarming rate.

US residents are drinking as much booze now as in Civil War days, with childless women 35 years old at the most risk of binge drinking.

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