The U.S. may soon advise Americans to limit their alcohol consumption to no more than two drinks per week, according to the director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA).
The agency currently recommends that men drink no more than two drinks per day and that women stick to just one drink per day. The U.S. recommendations will come up for review in 2025, and NIAAA director George Koob tells the Daily Mail the agency may change its current guidelines to more closely reflect Canada’s stricter guidelines, which recommend just two drinks per week.
Koob, who said he drinks a couple of glasses of wine per week, said he is keeping an eye on the Canadians’ “big experiment” with interest.
“If there’s health benefits, I think people will start to re-evaluate where we’re at,” Koob said.
He said he is “pretty sure” the American recommendations will not increase as there are “no benefits” to physical health from drinking alcohol.
“So, if [alcohol consumption guidelines] go in any direction, it would be toward Canada,” Koob said.
The NIAAA currently defines heavy drinking for men as consuming more than four drinks in one day, or more than 14 drinks per week, whereas heavy drinking for women is defined as consuming more than three drinks in one day, or more than seven drinks per week.
“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,” Koob said, explaining the potential shift toward stricter guidelines.
“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. With this in mind, most of the benefits kind of disappear on the health side,” he added, though he acknowledged alcohol has a benefit as a “social lubricant.”
Critics have blasted Koob’s comments as the latest example of the Biden administration’s nanny state.
“This is who the Democrats are,” Representative Troy Nehls (R., Texas) told Fox News. They want to control every aspect of your life.”
“Two beers a week? What a joke,” he added. “Let’s not forget that JFK snagged 1,200 Cuban cigars just hours before banning all Cuban products from the United States.”
Distilled Spirits Council vice president of science and health Amanda Berger accused Koob of undermining the scientific rigor and objectivity of the “entire Dietary Guidelines process” by calling for a “drastic change to the federal recommendations on alcohol before the review of alcohol research has even begun.”
“For more than 30 years, the federal guidance on alcohol consumption has been no more than one drink per day for women and two drinks per day for men for those who choose to drink,” she told Fox News. “It is extremely alarming and inappropriate for a federal official to predetermine the outcome of the Dietary Guidelines and suggest changing decades of precedent without the benefit of the scientific review to support such a sweeping move.”