Donald Trump drops US daily drink limits in new guidance
The Trump administration has scrapped numeric advice on alcohol in its 2025 to 2030 dietary guidelines, replacing it with a softer injunction to drink less. The shift is timely, as a cultural battle ensues over the science of moderation and what public health should ask of pleasure.
The United States Government has abandoned long-standing advice that men should limit alcohol to two drinks a day and women to one, opting instead to tell adults that drinking less is better for health, as reported by Reuters. The change sits within the 2025 to 2030 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, a document that shapes medical advice, school meals and federal policy, according to the same report.
“There is alcohol on the dietary guidelines but the implication is, don’t have it for breakfast,” said Mehmet Oz, administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, speaking as the guidelines were released, according to Reuters. “In the best case scenario, I don’t think you should drink alcohol, but it does allow people an excuse to bond and socialise, and there’s probably nothing healthier than having a good time with friends in a safe way.”
Oz added that there was never good data supporting the old limits of two drinks for men and one for women, as per Reuters. He also pointed to regions in Greece, Italy and Japan where people live longer and drink “very judiciously and usually in a celebratory fashion,” according to Reuters.
Make America healthy again
The guidelines are overseen by health and human services secretary Robert F Kennedy JR and agriculture secretary Brooke Rollins and form part of President Donald Trump’s Make America Healthy Again agenda. Alongside alcohol, the document urges Americans to eat more protein, consume less sugar and avoid highly processed foods, according to Reuters.
An administration official said federal officials do not believe the new alcohol advice represents a major change from previous guidance. For the first time, alcohol advice was handled in a separate process from the rest of the nutrition review, with two studies commissioned to inform the guidance.
Two studies and a subpoena
One study, commissioned during Joe Biden’s presidency, found that some health risks rise with as little as one drink per day. Another, commissioned by Congress and favoured by the alcohol industry, found that moderate drinking is associated with a lower risk of death from any cause.
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As reported by Felicity Carter for Drinks Insider, the latter was conducted by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and published in December 2024, concluding there was “moderate certainty” that people who drink in moderation have lower all-cause mortality than those who do not. Running in parallel was an Alcohol Intake and Health study by the Interagency Coordinating Committee on the Prevention of Underage Drinking, whose early draft warned that “the risk of dying from alcohol use begins at low levels of average use” and that higher consumption is linked with progressively higher mortality risk. That study was never published in final form, as reported by Carter.
The clash spilt into Congress. In April 2024, the House Oversight Committee demanded documents on the ICCPUD study and later produced a report titled A Study Fraught With Bias, according to Drinks Insider. The committee said the panel had a predetermined goal to mirror the Canadian model, which recommends cutting alcohol altogether or limiting intake to two drinks a week, as per Carter’s reporting.
Public health pushback
Nonprofit advocacy groups, including the US Alcohol Policy Alliance and the Center for Science in the Public Interest, warned the change could harm public health by encouraging heavier drinking as consumers define moderation themselves, according to Reuters. The World Health Organisation has said that even low levels of alcohol consumption can increase health risks, including certain cancers.
The market context is uneasy. A Gallup poll last year found Americans say they are drinking less than ever before, with more than half believing even moderate drinking is harmful. US weekly drinking per capita is at its lowest since the 1990s, reflecting a decline of around one drink per person per week, based on estimates from drinks market research firm IWSR using industry sales volumes, as reported by Reuters.
Choice, conviviality and the business of pleasure
The new wording stops short of prohibition. “If adults age 21 years and older choose to drink alcoholic beverages, drinking less is better for health than drinking more,” the guidelines state, as quoted by Drinks Insider. That phrasing avoids a collision with the World Health Organisation’s no safe level stance while stripping away the comforting arithmetic of moderation.
As reported by the drinks business, a wider cultural weariness with diktats around eating and drinking is setting in as 2026 begins. In that light, the American pivot reads less like a moral crusade than a tacit admission that pleasure resists tidy measurement. Wine, after all, has always been about context. Remove the numbers and what remains is judgement, social grace and the adult responsibility to know when the bottle should stay corked.
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