June 09, 2026
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Research published Tuesday counters federal dietary guidelines on alcohol consumption, finding that even one drink a day increases risk of cancer and early death.
Federal guidelines on alcohol consumption need "tightening" so that they recommend no more than one drink per day for both men and women, according to a study that the Trump administration reportedly sidelined when it released new dietary guidelines in January.
The study found that even one drink a day increases the risk of cancer, heart disease, liver disease and early death. At two drinks per day, the risk of early death is as high as 1 in 25 people.
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The research, known as the Alcohol Intake and Health Study, was published independently Tuesday in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs. The study had been commissioned under former President Joe Biden to inform the new dietary guidelines.
But the Trump administration sidestepped the findings — a draft of which were published last year — and instead softened dietary guidelines on drinking to say that Americans should "consume less alcohol for better overall health." The dietary guidelines, which are updated every five years, were more in line with a second report from a panel created by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine. That report, published last year, said that drinking in moderation was linked to a lower risk of death from all causes but increased the risk for certain diseases.
An editorial published alongside the Alcohol Intake and Health Study said the Trump Administration succumbed to pressure from the alcohol industry when creating the less-restrictive recommendations.
Robert Vincent, a former federal health advisor, who wrote the editorial and commissioned the study, lost his job last year during widespread downsizing of the federal workforce.
Vincent told the Associated Press that he was "asked to kill the study," which he refused to do. According to a Vox report in September, the Trump administration did not publish a final version of the study after protests against it from the alcohol industry.
The Trump administration has refuted those claims.
"Any characterization that the study was 'shelved' is inaccurate," Emily Hilliard, a spokeswoman for the Health and Human Services Department, said in a statement to the Washington Post.
The study used U.S. data on alcohol use and mortality and morbidity to estimate deaths directly attributable to alcohol consumption, finding that women who had one drink a day had a higher likelihood of dying from breast and liver cancer than women who didn't drink. It also found that men and women who consumed one drink a day had higher risk of death from liver cirrhosis, oral and esophageal cancers and injuries.
These findings align with other research in recent years that suggests alcohol offers no health benefits and that even moderate drinking is associated with increased risk of cancer and other health problems. Former U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy issued an advisory last year noting that alcohol consumption was a leading cause of preventable cancer and called for warnings about cancer risk on alcohol labels.
"The new dietary guidelines say that consuming less is better for your health, but don't say what consuming less means," Priscilla Martinez-Matyszczyk, one of the authors of the new study and the deputy scientific director of the alcohol research group at the nonprofit Public Health Institute, told the New York Times. "This paper does, and it says that having no more than one drink a day is best for health, and that drinking above that comes with significant risks."
