What the ale?
Americans could soon be advised to limit themselves to just two drinks a week, a top health official warned Thursday.
President Biden’s alcohol czar, Dr. George Koob, told the Daily Mail that the USDA could revise its alcohol recommendations to match Canada’s guidelines.
In January, the Great White North began urging residents to limit their alcohol consumption to two drinks per week.
Since the 1990s, the US has recommended women limit themselves to one drink per day and men to two drinks per day.
Stephen Yang
Stephen Yang
However, this guidance is up for review in 2025.
“If there’s health benefits, I think people will start to re-evaluate where we’re at [in the US],” Koob told the Daily Mail of Canada’s “big experiment” with its alcohol guidance.
“So, if [alcohol consumption guidelines] go in any direction, it would be toward Canada.”
Koob, the director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, noted there are “no benefits” to physical health from drinking alcohol.
“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,” he explained.
“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.”
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A Mediterranean diet — which is high in fats and proteins, but low in carbohydrates — is touted as an overall healthy diet.
The lifestyle has been said to protect against inflammation and heart disease.
Socio-economic status has also been linked to health.
Poverty is the nation’s fourth-leading cause of death, killing an estimated 183,000 Americans 15 and older in 2019, according to findings published in April in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Source: https://nypost.com/2023/08/24/bidens-alcohol-czar-warns-new-guidance-could-be-2-beers-a-week/