Two beers a week: the new recommendation from Biden's alcohol czar

Dr. George Koob could call for alcohol guidelines to be revised to more closely resemble those already in effect in Canada.

Un hombre tomando un vaso de cerveza. — (Cordon Press)

Published by

Rosana Rábago Sainz

28 de agosto, 2023

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Biden's alcohol czar, Dr. George Koob, recently said he might call for strict new guidelines on alcohol consumption. In an interview, Koob, who is also the director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), said that he was considering requesting that recommendations for beer consumption be reduced from two per day to just two beers a week.

The idea, he explained to the Daily Mail, came from the proposal being carried out by Canada. Koob, who confessed to the newspaper that he drinks two glasses of Chardonnay a week, said he is following the "big experiment" in Trudeau's country with great interest: "If there's health benefits, I think people will start to re-evaluate where we're at [in the US]."

The nation routinely follows current drinking guidelines. They currently recommend that men consume two beers per day, while women should limit themselves to one bottle of beer, a small glass of wine or one drink of alcohol a day. However, these U.S. recommendations are set to be reviewed in 2025. And that's when Dr. Koob said he could propose limiting alcohol consumption to just two drinks a week: "I mean, they're not going to go up, I'm pretty sure. [...] So, if [alcohol consumption guidelines] go in any direction, it would be toward Canada.."

Health, the main reason to limit alcohol consumption

The expert says that excessive alcohol consumption is bad for health. He justifies his claim with different studies such as one carried out at the University of Oxford. That work, recalls the Daily Mail, said that drinking "any amount of alcohol" could cause up to sixty diseases including liver cirrhosis, strokes and cancer. Therefore, Dr. Koob said that it was necessary for Americans to limit alcohol consumption as much as possible since, he said, "there were no benefits":

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. 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.

Texas Rep. Troy Nehls openly against beer czar

The recommendation has not been well received by many Americans. One of the most vocal critics was Texas Republican Rep. Troy Nehls. He, speaking to Fox News Digital, assured that the beer czar should not be the one to decide this recommendation:

Rich men north of Richmond are once again recommending what hard-working Americans should and shouldn’t do. Biden’s beer czar has no business advising ‘guidance’ on alcohol consumption. This is who the Democrats are. They want to control every aspect of your life. Two beers a week? What a joke. Let’s not forget that JFK snagged 1,200 Cuban cigars just hours before banning all Cuban products from the United States.

A similar statement was issued by the Distilled Spirits Council's Vice President of Science and Health Amanda Berger. She also criticized Dr. Koob's recommendation, per Fox:

Dr. Koob’s comments calling for a drastic change to the federal recommendations on alcohol before the review of alcohol research has even begun undermines the scientific rigor and objectivity of the entire Dietary Guidelines process. For more than 30 years, the federal guidance on alcohol consumption has been no more than one drink per day for women and two drinks per day for men for those who choose to drink. It is extremely alarming and inappropriate for a federal official to predetermine the outcome of the Dietary Guidelines and suggest changing decades of precedent without the benefit of the scientific review to support such a sweeping move.