Faced with rising cancer rates among young people and growing evidence that no level of alcohol consumption is safe, the United States is presenting itself as a leading country. outlier by telling its citizens that it is okay to drink alcohol in moderation, despite ample evidence to the contrary.
This may change in 2025, and the new administration, with its desire to “Make America Healthy Again,” has the ability to make this a priority. This can start by solving the problem of industry-funded studies.
It’s no secret that much of the research demonstrating the purported health benefits of everything from blueberries to alcohol is funded by companies profiting from the investment. “Funderers fund research with a particular outcome in mind,” said Marion Nestle, a professor of nutrition, food studies and public health at New York University. “They want results that will sell what they’re selling.”
The National Institutes of Health requires disclosure of research funding sources, but Nestlé says, “Disclosure is not enough. “It’s a necessary first step, but it’s not enough to solve the problem.”
The problem is long-standing, but merits new scrutiny due to conflicting narratives emerging as U.S. dietary guidelines are set to be revised in 2025. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy has called for warning labels on alcohol, saying that alcohol “is a well-established and preventable cause of cancer, responsible for approximately 100,000 cancer cases and 20,000 cancer deaths each year in the United States – more than the 13,500 deaths per year in alcohol-related traffic accidents in the United States – Yet the majority of Americans are unaware of this risk.
Murthy’s view conflicts with a report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, which stated that there was evidence of both harms and benefits of moderate alcohol consumption, and that light consumption of Alcohol may reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease and overall mortality. The report has been heavily criticized by those who say the government should take a tough stance against alcohol consumption. Speaking to the New York Times, Diane Riibe, co-founder of the American Alcohol Policy Alliance, called the report “a thinly veiled effort to undo the growing evidence that alcohol causes cancer and is increasingly associated with serious health problems.
How much alcohol is safe?
The growing chorus against alcohol includes actor Tom Holland, who said giving up alcohol allowed him to be “the best version of myself”, and podcaster Dr Andrew Huberman, a professor at Stanford University who said that the best amount of alcohol to drink is “zero” and that the negative health effects start to become more pronounced after just two drinks per week.
Once again, the United States dietary guidelines currently in effect say that men should limit their alcohol consumption to no more than two drinks per day. day and considers that you should drink in moderation.
According to the Directions 2020-2025: “To help Americans adopt a healthy diet and minimize the risks associated with alcohol consumption, adults of legal drinking age can choose not to drink or drink in moderation by limiting their consumption to 2 drinks or less per day for men and 1 drink or less. less per day for women, on days when alcohol is consumed. This is not an average over several days, but rather the amount consumed in a single day.
This is wording that could be interpreted as part of a “healthy diet”.
“The alcohol industry would like everyone to believe that moderate amounts of alcohol reduce the risk of heart disease and increase the risk of breast and colorectal cancer,” Nestlé told me.
“This is where the sharp discrepancies lie between the National Academies report – which some believe is tainted by financial ties to the alcohol industry – and the surgeon general’s report, which says alcohol causes cancer, straight up, and that any amount of alcohol increases cancer risk. There’s a lot of money at stake here.
Writing in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs, Thomas F. Babor, the journal’s editor, said that the alcohol industry’s influence on research threatens public health. “Researchers, clinicians, government officials, and policymakers generally agree that there is no place for the tobacco industry in medical research or public health policy,” Babor wrote. Likewise, representatives of the alcohol industry should remain “at a distance,” he argued.
Babor also advocated for controls on the “revolving door” that allowed government health officials to take corporate jobs, careful scrutiny of industry bias, and new leadership emphasizing emphasis on public health, given that “recent state-of-the-art evidence” from policy research studies has indicated that major improvements in life expectancy can result from public health policies alcohol, such as restrictions on availability, affordability and marketing of alcohol.
An “easy solution” to industry-funded studies
A long-time critic of industry-funded studies in the food and pharmaceutical sectors, Nestlé said there were decades of studies showing how sources of financing affect resultslargely through the way research is designed and interpreted, even when researchers insist that they are “just doing science.”
This mantra appeared in a statement to the New York Times by the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States, the Beer Institute and other industry organizations that America’s dietary guidelines “must be guided by a preponderance of sound science.”
In 2020, a study was published that found no link between the influence of industry funding on alcohol research. Writing about it at the time, Nestlé said the study defied credulity – because many of the authors worked for the Dutch Beer Institute. In another egregious example, the National Institutes of Health solicited money from alcohol companies to fund a study to determine whether a daily drink could be part of a healthy lifestyle. The study was later halted after an outcry when the New York Times reported on it in 2018.
While some argue that corporate money is needed because of the scarcity of research funding, Nestlé believes there is a simple solution: “They could all contribute to a common fund and then entrust the distribution of those funds to a third party. the recipient would have no idea who the funders were. …And when I say this to food companies, they tell me straight away that it doesn’t interest them. So this is not about science. It’s all about marketing,” she said.
And this marketing makes it difficult for the consumer to discern the truth, about alcohol or anything else. As Boston University professor David Jernigan said said“The purpose of marketing is to sell a product… When you’re selling a product that kills 140,000 people a year, you have to be very creative. And you can’t be as direct as it would be good for public health.”
But in this regard, the new administration is uniquely positioned to help.
What Donald Trump said about drinking
President-elect Donald Trump is perhaps the country’s most famous teetotaler. He said he never had a drink of alcohol because he observed the effects of drinking on his older brother, Fred Trump Jr., who suffered from alcoholism and died of a heart attack at age 43. Trump also said he taught his children from an early change “no drugs, no alcohol, no tobacco.” But according to PolicyTrump said he hasn’t talked much about his aversion to alcohol with people he works with, nor has he discouraged others from drinking. It would go a long way toward “making America healthy again” if Trump talked to the country about alcohol like he talked to his kids.
Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., also struggle addicted to drugs and alcohol, and still attends 12-step meetings today, according to the Palm Beach Post reported. Assuming Kennedy is confirmed, he will likely have influence over the new dietary guidelines – if they are released.
Trump has said that it’s easy to not drink or take alcohol if you never start, and that we should teach young people what his older brother told him: “Don’t drink.” Don’t drink. Don’t drink.
We can debate whether the government should be in the business of issuing dietary guidelines, especially since some USDA advice has been challenged as outdated or influenced by lobbyists. The Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, for example, publishes its own “Plate for healthy eatingwhich in some way contradicts the USDA’s “MyPlate” recommendations, stating that “The Healthy Eating Plate is based exclusively on the best available science and has not been subject to political or commercial pressure from the from food industry lobbyists. »
But as long as it continues to tell us what we should eat and drink, the government’s message on alcohol consumption should be as strong as Huberman’s: the only safe amount of alcohol is zero. And in the future, no research funded by the alcohol industry should be cited in a government report.
