What the ale?
Americans could soon be advised to limit themselves to simply two drinks every week, a top health official warned Thursday.
President Biden’s alcohol czar, Dr. George Koob, told the Every day Mail that the USDA could revise its alcohol recommendations to match Canada’s guidelines.
In January, the Great White North began urging residents to limit their alcohol consumption to two drinks per week.
Because the Nineteen Nineties, the US has beneficial women limit themselves to 1 drink per day and men to 2 drinks per day.
Nonetheless, this guidance is up for review in 2025.
“If there’s health advantages, I believe people will begin to re-evaluate where we’re at [in the US],” Koob told the Every day Mail of Canada’s “big experiment” with its alcohol guidance.
“So, if [alcohol consumption guidelines] go in any direction, it will be toward Canada.”
Koob, the director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, noted there are “no advantages” to physical health from drinking alcohol.
“A lot of the advantages people attribute to alcohol, we feel they really have more to do with what someone’s eating somewhat than what they’re drinking,” he explained.
“So it really has to do with the Mediterranean food regimen, socio-economic status, that makes you capable of afford that type of food regimen and make your personal fresh food and so forth.”
A Mediterranean food regimen — which is high in fats and proteins, but low in carbohydrates — is touted as an overall healthy food regimen.
The life-style has been said to guard against inflammation and heart disease.
Socio-economic status has also been linked to health.
Poverty is the nation’s fourth-leading reason behind death, killing an estimated 183,000 Americans 15 and older in 2019, in response to findings published in April within the Journal of the American Medical Association.
“With this in mind, many of the advantages type of disappear on the health side,” said Koob, who confessed to having fun with a few glasses of Chardonnay every week.
He did admit the social advantages of alcohol, describing it as a “social lubricant.”
His remarks follow several reports warning that Americans are consuming alcohol at an alarming rate.
US residents are drinking as much booze now as in Civil War days, with childless women 35 years old at essentially the most risk of binge drinking.