Alcohol Justice’s review of the process documents surrounding the newly released United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) guidelines for alcohol consumption suggests that the suppression of the Alcohol Intake and Health Study may have prevented the agency from adhering to its own best practices. According to those documents, the USDA should “[c]onsider the findings of 2 other expert committees that are addressing alcoholic beverages and health outcomes” when assembling the 2025-2030 Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA). Yet, through both internal and external pressures, at least two potential expert committees were blocked from contributing to the final advisories.
For the past 35 years, the government’s standard dietary guidance has been that U.S. residents not drink, or if they do drink, have no more than 1 drink a day for women, 2 for men. Last week’s release of the DGA cut all of that back to only one sentence: “consume less alcohol for overall health.” Although this reinforces the evidence-based principle that no amount of alcohol is good for your health, it ends up being less effective in terms of health promotion. Subsequent to the DGA release, however, reporting from Reuter’s and Vox shows there’s more to the story.
In early 2025, draft copies of a government report on alcohol harm, the Alcohol Intake and Health study, began circulating. The report zeroed in on known physiological harms from alcohol, including cancers, liver disease, and cirrhosis. More significantly, it modeled how risk increases as drinking increases. The resulting conclusion was similar to, but far more emphatic than, what ended up in the DGA document: the risks from alcohol consumption begin rising with the first sip.
Far from being lauded based on the significant findings in this draft, however, the study was immediately criticized by members of Congress. Central to their objection was the fact that, in a departure from past iterations of the DGA, an outside organization had already been commissioned by Congress to review alcohol harm. This organization, the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine, released a report that relied on a handful of previously published papers with similar, flawed methodology to conclude alcohol consumption could sometimes lead to less mortality. The Alcohol Intake and Health Study, by contrast, had been directly solicited by experts within the government, an action that prompted a congressional oversight investigation starting in early 2025. The results of that investigation, released simultaneously with the new DGA, in January of 2026, concluded that the Alcohol Intake and Health study was redundant and biased, and would never be released.
At the same time Congress was investigating that study, however, Reuter’s reports that a separate, cross-agency group at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) was drafting a proposal to reduce the prior recommendation for men from 2 drinks per day to 1 drink per day. This measure, though simple on its face, reflected not just the changing body of evidence around alcohol harm, but the alarming 26.8% increase in alcohol-related deaths among men between 2016 and 2021. Yet by the middle of last year, every member of that group had either been told to stop working on the DGA, or had their positions eliminated and been forced out of HHS entirely.
It is impossible to know how the final DGA alcohol advisory would have read were either of these expert groups allowed to contribute to the final document. What the supporting documents for the DGA make plain, however, is that the final DGA recommendations for alcohol failed to meet the USDA’s own best practices for interpreting evidence, specifically for lack of additional expert input. As part of the supplemental materials released by the DGA team, The Scientific Foundation for the Dietary Guidelines for Americans is intended to provide transparency around the process of assembling the main document. Within it are a list of the practices advanced by the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, and whether the final report followed them or not. Item #55 reads: “Consider the findings of 2 other expert committees that are addressing alcoholic beverages and health outcomes.”
Next to it, the box indicating this recommendation was not followed is checked.
It is not clear whether there were ever additional expert committees or sources for reports that the USDA consider engaging in the alcohol guideline process. It is not even clear that the either the Alcohol Intake and Health authors or the internal working group within HHS would have qualified as “other expert committees” if they had been consulted. What is known, however, is that the USDA guidelines leave glaring need for clear, transparent, and actionable health information around alcohol consumption. It is a clear case of knowledge being power, and power being the ability to live a longer, healthier, happier life.
READ MORE about the facts behind alcohol’s impact on health.
READ MORE — the archived draft of the Alcohol Intake & Health Study.