This has been a year marked by bad health advice, the initial recommendation by government health officials against mask-wearing being the most high-profile example.
Now, the new dietary guidelines proposed by the United States Department of Agriculture, which may be finalized as soon as this week, could make more bad health advice into official government policy for the next half-decade.
The USDA Dietary Guideline Advisory Committee, which is responsible for reviewing and updating the USDA’s dietary guidelines every five years, has proposed altering the definition of moderate drinking. Whereas that is now defined as two drinks per day for men and one for women, the committee is proposing to change the guidelines to recommend instead that both men and women consume no more than one adult beverage per day.
The advisory committee stated that a “preponderance of evidence indicates that consuming two drinks per day among men is associated with a modest but meaningful increase in risk compared to consumption of lower amounts, including one drink per day.” The committee also pointed to “emerging evidence [suggesting] the magnitude of risk associated with low volume alcohol consumption may have been underestimated.”
Critics of the advisory committee’s proposed change point out that, contrary to what the advisory committee claims, its decision is not at all based on a preponderance of scientific evidence. In making its decision, the advisory committee approved 60 articles and studies to review. Only one of those 60 recommended one drink per day for both men and women. As it would happen, the preponderance of evidence, at least of the evidence reviewed by the committee, actually goes against the committee’s proposed change to the guidelines.
“In fact, the advisory group’s 835-page report admits that ‘only one study examined differences among men comparing one versus two drinks,’” the Wine Institute noted. “This is far from the preponderance of evidence that would be needed to reverse decades of U.S. guidance.”
“[The report] would suggest that there is a lot of new science on this topic, and there’s not,” Eric Rimm, a nutrition researcher at Harvard who was also a member of the 2010 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, told Politico.
The advisory committee reviewing the alcohol guidelines comprises at least one advocate for alcohol tax increases and heavier regulation. That advocate, Tim Naimi, is a former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention official who is now one of the lead advisory committee members reviewing the alcohol guidelines.
Naimi has published numerous studies that call for higher alcohol taxes and greater regulation of alcohol sales. “The disparity between alcohol-related cost to government and alcohol taxes amounts to a large taxpayer-funded subsidy of excessive drinking and alcohol companies,” Naimi stated in a recent study.
Sixty studies were approved for the advisory committee’s review. Yet in its report, the advisory committee cited numerous studies outside of those 60 to reach its conclusion. In fact, eight of the studies cited by the committee that were outside of the 60 approved studies were co-authored by Naimi.
“These arbitrary selections all appear intended to support claims made by members of the DGAC prior to appointment, rather than as systematic and transparent reviews of existing scientific evidence,” Rimm added.
Though not a law approved by Congress, USDA dietary guidelines almost carry the weight of law. All government departments, agencies, and programs are supposed to use and adhere to the USDA’s guidelines. Opponents of the committee’s recommendation point to it and its lack of scientific support as proof that this unelected body within the USDA has been hijacked by zero-alcohol zealots pushing a political agenda.
The good news for opponents of the advisory committee’s proposal is that the issue is not yet settled. The proposed guidelines are receiving further vetting from the USDA and the Department of Health and Human Services before they are finalized, which could happen this week.
Patrick Gleason is vice president of state affairs at Americans for Tax Reform.
