U.S. Scientific Panel Reaffirms Health Benefits of Moderate Drinking

Perhaps a daily glass of wine has been unfairly targeted. The panel of health experts tasked with studying alcohol consumption for the U.S. Dietary Guidelines has found with “moderate certainty” that people who drink alcohol in moderation have lower all-cause mortality than those who don’t drink.

The report provides a strong argument that the current guidelines, which recommend men drink no more than two glasses of alcohol per day and women drink no more than one, should remain in place, despite a growing chorus by anti-alcohol activists that no level of drinking is safe.

What remains to be seen is whether a second review, conducted by the Interagency Coordinating Committee on the Prevention of Underage Drinking (ICCPUD) and staffed by a group of researchers with ties to anti-alcohol advocacy groups, will come to different conclusions.

An In-Depth Analysis of Medical Research

The dietary guidelines are published every five years by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and Health and Human Services (HHS). They impact public health organizations and scientific research. The recommendations on alcohol don’t govern federal programs, but they do send an important message on how Americans should view drinking. They warn of the dangers of heavy consumption and binge drinking. And since 1995 they have stated that alcohol, in moderate amounts, could offer some health benefits.

Before HHS and the USDA craft the guidelines, they consult panels of scientific experts on the various topics covered. For the section on alcohol, the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM) convened a committee of 14 academics, including experts in public health, family medicine, epidemiology and biostatistics. The panel and its staff conducted an extensive review of the current relevant science on alcohol’s impact on various health matters, including cardiovascular disease, cancer and neuro-cognition.

The panel notes in their introduction that research on alcohol and health is complex because studies are limited to looking at correlation rather than causation and that researchers often have to reply on people self-reporting how much they drink. The panel authors are careful to make clear how certain they are of each of their findings.

That said, their findings offer support to the theory that moderate consumption, which they define as no more than two drinks per day for men and one for women, offers health benefits. For example, they write, that with moderate certainty, “The committee concludes that compared with never consuming alcohol, moderate alcohol consumption is associated with lower all-cause mortality.” They also find with moderate certainty that “consuming moderate amounts of alcohol is associated with a lower risk of [cardiovascular disease] mortality in both females and males.”

Much of the recent focus on alcohol’s negative impacts has been on cancer, and the panel did find with moderate certainty that moderate consumption of alcohol is associated with a higher risk of breast cancer. But they also found that no conclusion could be drawn on a link between moderate consumption and several other cancers, including colorectal, pharyngeal and esophageal cancers. They also found insufficient evidence to decide how alcohol consumption impacts dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.

What Does This Mean for the Dietary Guidelines?

In a normal cycle, the panel’s report would be reviewed by the officials at HHS and the USDA who craft the final guidelines. The panel’s recommendations are not always adopted, but they carry a lot of weight.

But this year there is a second panel exploring alcohol and health, and rather than review existing scientific research, it is conducting its own. Members of this panel created by ICCPUD plan to use mathematical modeling to calculate how much harm alcohol causes in the U.S. Not only will they look at health issues that the dietary guidelines traditionally cover but also at traffic accidents and violence involving intoxicated people.

The six members of the committee are substance abuse experts, many of whom have made their careers looking into alcoholism and advocating for governments to pass new rules to reduce drinking.

A few months ago, a bipartisan group in Congress sent a letter to HHS, asking why an agency tasked with stopping underage drinking was doing research for guidelines on adult alcohol consumption. Their letter pointed out that this effort was not authorized or funded by Congress.

“We question why ICCPUD would choose to redirect limited resources away from its core responsibilities,” wrote Reps Mike Thompson of California and Dan Newhouse of Washington to HHS and USDA secretaries, in a letter signed by them and 111 colleagues. “The secretive process at ICCPUD and the concept of original research on adult alcohol consumption by a committee tasked with preventing underage drinking, jeopardizes the credibility of ICCPUD.”

ICCPUD has not announced when its report will be released.

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