The Impact of Dietary Guidelines Recommending "Moderation"

News that the coming Dietary Guidelines will recommend "moderation" is huge

In what is potentially outstanding news for the American wine industry, Reuters is reporting that the coming update of the Federal Dietary Guidelines will do away with its longstanding guidance that men drink no more than two drinks a day and women one drink per day.

The Reuters story suggests that the 2025 Dietary Guidelines “are expected to include a brief statement encouraging Americans to drink in moderation or limit alcohol intake due to associated health risks”.

Though the Reuthers story, written by Emma Rumney and Jessica DiNapoli, is based on four anonymous sources, this news suggests that the Trump administration is set to take a much less strident stance on alcohol than the previous administration, which approved and distributed a sketchy and incomplete Advisory from the Surgeon General on the connection between alcohol consumption and cancer.

The report also, if true, would be a 180-degree reversal from my own reporting from May 2024 that plans were underway for the Dietary Guidelines to announce “No amount of alcohol is acceptable for a healthy lifestyle.”

What has happened in that time? First, a new administration has taken control of the development of the Dietary Guidelines. During the first Trump administration, a change in the 2020 Guidelines recommending no more than 1 drink per day was rejected, and the recommendations stayed as they have been.

Additionally, since May 2024, Kentucky Representative James Comer (R) aggressively pushed the Biden Administration to release documents explaining why it had allowed a second, congressionally unauthorized group—The Interagency Coordinating Committee on the Prevention of Underage Drinking (ICCPUD)—to conduct a study that would contribute to the Dietary Guidelines.

Also, a good deal of lobbying on this issue by the likes of Diageo, AB InBev, and other industry organizations has demonstrated the seriousness of allowing a biased, ideologically driven group such as ICCPUD to play a key role in the development of the Guidelines.

Finally, the Trump administration has shown a desire to discredit nearly everything the Biden administration had done. This seems likely to be behind Secretary Robert Kennedy’s decision, explained at a May 14 congressional hearing, to trim back the Biden era Dietary Guidelines draft from its 450 pages to a mere four pages:

"We are about to reissue the dietary guidelines, and we're going to do it very quickly. We have until January … I think we'll have it done even before August," Kennedy said. "And we took the Biden guidelines, which were 453 pages long and were clearly written by industry that are incomprehensible, driven by the same industry capture and those kind of carnal impulses that put Froot Loops at the top of the food pyramid. And we are changing that. So we're going to have four-page dietary guidelines that tell people, essentially, eat whole food, eat the food that's good for you."

Whittling down a 450-page document to a mere 4 pages provides little room to make detailed recommendations on any subject, including alcohol. This move, combined with the lobbying and Congressional concern over the process behind the alcohol portion of the Dietary Guidelines, could explain the reporting we are now seeing.

The impact of the new Dietary Guidelines simply recommending “moderation” in alcohol consumption is huge. Over the past 30+ years, the Federal Government’s recommendations for alcohol consumption (2 drinks a day for men and 1 drink a day for women) have infiltrated nearly every statement made by every health and social institution. The media regularly quotes these recommendations. And this guidance has made it into every educational institution.

The difference between “drink moderately” and “No amount of alcohol is acceptable for a healthy lifestyle” can’t be overstated. The latter claim is so wildly simplistic and disconnected from scientific reality that one can only conclude it is an ideological rather than commonsense claim. By keeping this claim out of the public discourse, wine advocates can continue to preach moderation with state endorsement.

The Reuters story is based on anonymous sources and could be wrong or the situation could change. Nevertheless, this is very encouraging news for an industry that has not been beset with encouraging news.

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Image above: “Temperance” by Piero del Pollaiuolo