Even light drinking raises the risk of cancer, heart disease and early death, according to a federal study the government left out of its latest dietary advice.
The Alcohol Intake and Health Study was recently published in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs.
The study was commissioned under the Biden administration to help shape the 2025-2030 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, but the Trump administration declined to feature its findings in the guidelines released earlier this year, after pushback from the alcohol industry and a congressional committee.
The researchers, from the U.S. and Canada, had medical experts review more than 7,200 studies on alcohol-related diseases and injuries, then applied those risk levels to national health data and modeled how drinking habits affect long-term health.
Health risks rise starting at about one drink a day, and the study found no level of drinking that protects overall health. Even amounts many people consider moderate raise the risk of premature death and more than 200 diseases, including cardiovascular disease and several cancers.
Here’s how the risk scales:
- Up to seven drinks a week: Minimally elevated risk for most conditions.
- About 14 drinks a week: A 1-in-25 risk of dying from an alcohol-related cause.
A standard drink is one 12-ounce beer, a 5-ounce glass of wine or a shot of liquor. According to the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence, alcohol is the country’s most commonly used addictive substance.
There’s no healthy amount
The study challenges the notion that alcohol can be good for you.
Older studies that suggested a heart benefit compared drinkers with nondrinkers instead of randomly assigning people, the researchers note, and that benefit faded once factors like income, education and health care access were accounted for.
At low levels, alcohol may lower the risk of ischemic heart disease and stroke, but the researchers say those possible benefits are outweighed by higher cancer and chronic disease risk by seven drinks a week.
“Even low levels of alcohol use come with health risks. And that risk continues to increase the more someone drinks,” lead author of the study Kevin Shield says in a summary of the findings.
Why you don’t see the findings in the guidelines
The current dietary guidelines tell Americans to “consume less alcohol for better overall health” without defining a limit. The study’s authors say that leaves out the practical numbers people need. They back a firmer line of no more than one drink a day.
The path to publication was contested. Robert Vincent, a former federal alcohol-policy official who led the effort and was later laid off, wrote in an accompanying editorial that the findings were sidelined and told the Associated Press he was “asked to kill the study.”
The House Oversight Committee called the research “fraught with bias,” and the Distilled Spirits Council called it “irretrievably flawed.” A spokesperson from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services denied that the study was ignored, saying the guidelines drew on the full body of evidence rather than any single report.
A separate government-commissioned review reached a softer conclusion, tying moderate drinking to lower all-cause mortality alongside higher risk for some diseases. The new study’s authors say they measured only deaths attributed to alcohol, to avoid muddying the results.
For drinkers, the researchers’ position is straightforward: Less is better, and the risk climbs with each additional drink.
For more on the health risks of drinking regularly, see “Drinking Even a Little Alcohol Each Day Is Tied to This Health Problem.”
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