Trump administration ditches advice to limit alcohol to 1-2 drinks per day

By Jessica DiNapoli and Emma Rumney

NEW YORK, Jan 7 (Reuters) – President Donald Trump’s administration released new nutrition guidelines on Wednesday that abandon long-standing U.S. recommendations that Americans restrict alcohol consumption to two beverages a day for men and one for women in favor of simply advising they consume less to be healthier.

The change is part of the new 2025-2030 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, the U.S. government’s roadmap to healthy drinking and eating practices that influences medical advice, the composition of school lunches and other policies.

“There is alcohol on the dietary guidelines but the implication is, don’t have it for breakfast,” said Mehmet Oz, a celebrity physician and Trump’s administrator for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.

“In the best-case scenario, I don’t think you should drink alcohol, but it does allow people an excuse to bond and socialize, and there’s probably nothing healthier than having a good time with friends in a safe way.”

Oz said there was never good data supporting that moderate drinking for men was two drinks a day and one for women.

He added that in certain regions in Greece, Italy and Japan, where people live longer, they drink “very judiciously and usually in a celebratory fashion.”

CONSERVATIVE HEALTH MOVEMENT

The new dietary guidelines, overseen by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, also recommend that Americans eat more protein, less sugar and avoid highly processed foods.

The guidelines are the latest product of the Trump administration’s “Make America Healthy Again” agenda, backed by a conservative social movement that among other things also advocates relaxing vaccine requirements for children, a move decried by major medical groups.

Reuters previously reported that the new guidelines would drop the alcohol serving descriptions, widely seen as providing a rule of thumb for the definition of moderate drinking. 

An administration official said federal officials do not believe the new recommendations for alcohol are a major change from previous government advice.

ADVOCACY GROUPS PUSH BACK

Nonprofit advocacy groups such as the U.S. Alcohol Policy Alliance and the Center for Science in the Public Interest have said the move would hurt public health and could lead to heavier drinking as consumers define moderation themselves.  

Other health authorities including the World Health Organization have said even low levels of alcohol consumption can increase health risks, including certain cancers.

In January 2025, before Trump began his second term in office, then-President Joe Biden’s surgeon general Vivek Murthy called for cancer warning labels on alcoholic beverages, sending down shares of major spirits and beer producers like Diageo and Anheuser-Busch InBev.

A Gallup poll found last year that Americans say they are drinking less than ever before, with more than half saying even moderate drinking is harmful. U.S. weekly drinking per capita is at its lowest since the 1990s, though this reflects a decline of only around one drink per person per week, according to estimates from drinks market research firm IWSR based on industry sales volumes. 

For the first time, recommendations for drinking were handled in a separate process from the rest of the nutritional advice, with two separate studies commissioned to inform the alcohol guidelines. 

One study, commissioned by health officials during Biden’s presidency, found that some health risks rise with as little as one drink per day. Another, commissioned by Congress and preferred by the alcohol industry, found moderate drinking is associated with a lower risk of death from any cause.

During Trump’s first term in office, U.S. health officials rejected the advice of scientists to tighten the drinking recommendations for a previous set of federal guidelines.

(Reporting by Jessica DiNapoli in New York and Emma Rumney in London; additional reporting by Leah Douglas and Jeff Mason in Washington, D.C.; Editing by Will Dunham and Bill Berkrot)