Is a Drink a Day Healthy? Depends on Who (and When) You Ask
Is a Drink a Day Healthy? Depends on Who (and When) You Ask
Recent research on alcohol’s connection to human health has been frightening, then soothing, then horrifying. What’s with the whiplash? We investigate.
By Kate Dingwall
Alcohol seems to be back in the good books of the federal government. For now.
After lots of back-and-forth, it looks like the soon-to-be-updated U.S. Dietary Guidelines will not incorporate the findings of a study the U.S. government commissioned that linked moderate drinking to negative impacts on human health.
Given the recent headlines, this news is strangely both surprising and expected. Over the last five years, leading scientists, their studies, and governmental bodies whose policies are informed on such research have changed their stances on alcoholic beverages and its purported health benefits again, again, and again.
The biggest shock came in 2023, when the World Health Organization announced that no amount of alcohol is safe for human consumption. A year later, new reports—including one by the European Society of Cardiology and another by Mass General Brigham—found that a glass of wine a day offered positive benefits to cardiac health. Soon after, the U.S. Surgeon General released an advisory linking alcohol consumption to seven different types of cancer.
It’s been a dizzying ride to say the least—and has added a whole new layer to the erosion of public trust in the federal government. According to the Pew Research Center, as of May 2024, only 22% of Americans say they trust the government in Washington to do what is right “just about always” or “most of the time,” one of the lowest figures in nearly 70 years of polling.
After all the heehaw about the soon-to-be-released U.S. Dietary Guidelines making its first change in alcohol intake recommendations for the first time since it was established in 1980, this whiplash begs the question—does anyone actually even care what the government has to say about how much we should or should not drink?
To help wade through the muck—and make an informed decision on how to proceed—we’ve laid out the turbulent timeline on where the feds stand in the war against, and for, moderate alcohol consumption. Do with this information what you will.
1980
The Dietary Guidelines for Americans is issued for the first time. It advises that women should not consume more than one standard drink per day, while men may have two.
Going forward, the secretaries of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) will provide scientist-backed advice on nutrition and food every five years.
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1991
Journalist Morley Safer appears on 60 Minutes to propose his theory, the French Paradox. If the French can dig into buttery, fatty foods and sip wine on the daily, why are the country’s heart disease levels low? Should Americans follow suit?
Within a year, red wine sales in the U.S. jumped 40%.
2017
Congress requests the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) step in to overhaul the Dietary Guidelines. They start on a comprehensive report.
June 2018
The National Institutes of Health abruptly terminates its ambitious Moderate Alcohol and Cardiovascular Health (MACH) trial due to concerns about credibility, four months after it started. The study’s principal scientist and officials from the agency’s alcohol division solicited $60 million from alcohol companies to conduct the research, a conflict of interest that violates federal policy.
Spring 2022
HHS, under President Joe Biden, is commissioned to cover an Alcohol Intake and Health Study to inform the 2025 update to the U.S. Dietary Guidelines.
The HHS calls in the Interagency Coordinating Committee on Underage Drinking (ICCPUD) to run its own review of the alcohol section.
Fall 2022
Trouble bubbles up. By late 2022, there are two rival panels working on reports: one from the ICCPUD and another from NASEM. Both are guided by their own researchers, following their own methods with the intention of informing the dietary guidelines.
These reports eventually come to very different conclusions.
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January 2023
In early January, the World Health Organization (WHO) releases a statement stating that no amount of alcohol consumption is safe for human health.
As a result, Canada’s Department of Health asks the Canadian Center on Substance Use and Addiction (CCSA) to update Canada’s guidelines. The findings: one to two drinks a week are safe. Any more than that could have serious consequences. The drastic new alcohol guidelines are dubbed “Canada’s big experiment.”
The results shock Canadians and their neighbors.
Rumors of the U.S. following suit start swirling. George Koob, the director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, tells the Daily Mail that “the USDA could revise its alcohol advice to match Canada’s where people are advised to have just two drinks per week.”
December 2023
Two of NASEM’s researchers, both from Harvard, are named and then asked to leave the panel of scientists due to ties to the alcohol industry.
December 2024
The peer-reviewed NASEM report concludes that moderate alcohol consumption isn’t necessarily harmful. In fact, it claims a glass a day can lower risks of cardiovascular disease and all-cause mortality, and may actually be better for you than not drinking at all.
NASEM does find connections between alcohol and breast cancer. However, “no conclusion could be drawn regarding an association between moderate alcohol consumption and oral cavity, pharyngeal, esophageal, or laryngeal cancers,” says the report.
January 2025
Outgoing surgeon general Dr. Vivek Murthy calls for tobacco-style warning labels on alcoholic beverages. They would warn consumers that cracking the top could increase the risk of breast, colon, and five other cancers. “What we know with a high degree of confidence is that there is a causal link between alcohol and cancer risk,” says Murthy.
A couple weeks later, ICCPUD releases its first draft of its Alcohol Intake and Health Study. The report reviews a range of studies and runs data through statistical models of the American populations to estimate the mortality effects of alcohol.
The results are haunting. It finds that negative health impacts start at low levels of consumption and increase sharply from there. At one drink per day, men have a one in 1,000 chance of dying from alcohol-related causes. Two drinks a day, and that increases to one in 25.
May 2025
The Make America Health Again report, released by President Trump and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., noticeably excludes alcohol consumption.
The U.S. Alcohol Policy Alliance, a national nonprofit that seeks to lessen alcohol harm, wasn’t happy. “Alcohol use is killing Americans in record numbers, overwhelming our hospitals, and fueling a public health and economic emergency—yet it is entirely absent from the White House’s flagship health report,” says Mike Marshall, CEO of U.S. Alcohol Policy Alliance.
June 2025
Reuters reports the that Dietary Guidelines will receive an unexpected update: the longstanding recommendations that women should stick to one drink a day and men, two, will be scrapped. Sources claim that alcohol-related recommendations will be either limited to a couple sentences or appear in a longer index.
August 2025
HHS decides to withdraw—not publish—the ICCPUD report.
Meanwhile, Congress talks about defunding the ICCPUD, and the ICCPUD report is removed from government websites.
The NASEM report, which supports moderate consumption, becomes the only report left to influence the US.. Dietary Guidelines. Despite dropping two scientists with financial conflicts of interest, another panelist who helped with the findings is criticized for having ties to the alcohol industry.
September 2025
The 2025 to 2030 U.S. Dietary Guidelines are set to be released by the end of the month, after being pushed back from its initial August release date.
More Health Coverage
- Healthy or hazardous? Unpacking wine’s latest ride on the wellness roller coaster.
- The big problem with anti-alcohol studies that no one’s talking about.
- Many bar pros leave the industry and never come back. Why? A lack of empathy.
- For wine country residents, mental health has become a massive priority.
- Breweries around the country have begun supporting mental health initiatives.
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