Two reports analyzing alcohol’s impact on human health have come to differing conclusions that may inform decisions on the Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2025-2030. One of them already has provoked criticism from lawmakers and the alcoholic beverage industry.
A December report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine found associations between moderate alcohol consumption and lower risks of all-cause mortality and cardiovascular disease, when compared to people who never consume alcohol. It did, however, find links between moderate alcohol consumption and an increased risk of some types of cancer.
A second report released last week by the Interagency Coordinating Committee on the Prevention of Underage Drinking (ICCPUD), found males and females have a 1 in 1000 risk of dying from alcohol use if they consume more than seven drinks per week. That risk increases to 1 in 100 if they consume more than nine drinks per week, it says.
The ICCPUD report also says males and females who consume one drink per day are likely to have an increased risk of liver cirrhosis, esophageal cancer, oral cancer and injuries but lower risk for ischemic stroke, while women specifically have a higher risk for liver cancer and lower risk for diabetes. Alcohol generally is associated with increased mortality for colorectal, breast, liver, oral cavity, pharynx, larynx and esophagus cancer, with risk increasing with higher use.
Both reports will be used to inform the secretaries of the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Agriculture as they develop the guidelines for the 2025-2030 period this year.
ICCPUD’s study has been the subject of criticism since it began last year. Last October a bipartisan group of 113 House lawmakers told the secretaries of agriculture and HHS that they were concerned that the ICCPUD study “is deviating from its primary mis
House Oversight and Accountability Chair James Comer, R-Ky. sion of reducing and preventing underage drinking.”
Conducting a study at the same time the National Academies were doing their own is “duplicative,” they said in a letter, which also expressed concern that members of the Scientific Review Panel "were not appropriately vetted for conflicts of interest.”
Following release of the ICCPUD report last week, House Oversight and Accountability Chair James Comer, R-Ky., criticized it in a statement, arguing it promotes an “unscientific, predetermined narrative about the effects of alcohol on health."
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"The Oversight Committee is demanding immediate transparency from Biden’s HHS about why it commissioned additional evaluations outside of the congressionally mandated, recently published National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine study,” Comer said. "Americans deserve honesty from the federal government about the processes used to determine public health guidelines.”
In a joint statement, 23 alcohol industry groups decried the release of the ICCPUD report, calling it “the product of a flawed, opaque and unprecedented process, rife with bias and conflicts of interest.” They urged the cabinet secretaries to disregard the report when they write the new version of the dietary guidelines.
“This report heightens our concerns that the Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommendations with respect to alcohol will not be based on a preponderance of sound scientific evidence,” the statement said.
Leaders of 15 of these groups last year also warned health officials that conducting two concurrent reviews of alcohol “appears to be a wholly unprecedented move” and that nothing was known about the ICCPUD analysis until late January of last year. They also expressed concern about the review panel, arguing “minimal information was provided about their credentials and potential conflicts of interest."
Jürgen Rehm, one of the ICCPUD report authors, defended the process, saying that members of the scientific review panel were subject to financial disclosures and simply laid out risks, not recommendations, in the report. The report used meta-analyses selected by experts in cancer, cardiovascular disease, digestive conditions, neurological disorders and infectious diseases.
Jürgen Rehm, Institute for Mental Health Policy Research and Campbell Family Mental Health Research Institute“We are just giving the bare science,” Rehm, a senior scientist at the Institute for Mental Health Policy Research and Campbell Family Mental Health Research Institute, told Agri-Pulse. “And that is what came out of this report.”
HHS and USDA are accepting comments on the reports until Feb. 14. Release of the next set of dietary guidelines is expected to come "in late 2025," according to an HHS press release.
Biden-era Surgeon General Vivek Murthy also weighed in on alcohol consumption, writing in a Jan. 3 advisory that it is the third leading preventable cause of cancer. He called for alcohol labels to include a warning about cancer risk, reassessment of recommended limits for alcohol consumption and expanded efforts to increase public awareness of cancer risks from alcohol.
"Alcohol is a well-established, preventable cause of cancer responsible for about 100,000 cases of cancer and 20,000 cancer deaths annually in the United States — greater than the 13,500 alcohol-associated traffic crash fatalities per year in the U.S. — yet the majority of Americans are unaware of this risk,” Murthy said in a release.
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