- The U.S. may follow Canada’s footsteps on alcohol guidelines
President Biden’s alcohol czar says Americans may be told by officials to have no more than two beers a week.
Director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) George Koob told the Daily Mail on Thursday that the U.S. may follow Canada’s footsteps on alcohol guidelines.
Currently, American guidelines recommend men limit themselves to two drinks per day while women should only have one drink.
The American recommendations are up for review in 2025.
Canada‘s guidelines recommend only having two drinks per week.
Koob, who said he partakes of a couple of glasses of ‘buttery Californian Chardonnay’ a week, said he was watching the Canadian ‘big experiment’ with interest.
‘If there’s health benefits, I think people will start to re-evaluate where we’re at,’ Koob said.
Koob said there are ‘no benefits’ to physical health from drinking alcohol and that he was ‘pretty sure’ American alcohol consumption recommendations are ‘not going to go up.’
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‘So, if [alcohol consumption guidelines] go in any direction, it would be toward Canada,’ Koob said.
‘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,’ Koob added.
‘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.
‘With this in mind, most of the benefits kind of disappear on the health side.’
Koob did say alcohol had its social benefits, as well, calling it a ‘social lubricant.’
