Science supports new dietary guidelines limiting alcohol consumption | TheHill - The Hill

Recently, an advisory committee of 20 nationally recognized scientific experts recommended changing federal dietary guidelines on alcohol consumption, with limits for men who drink lowered from two drinks per day to one drink per day.

In fact, drinking alcohol increases the risk of at least six cancer types.

The cancer risk increases with heavier levels of consumption, but an established and growing body of research shows that even “light” alcohol consumption — less than one drink per day — also causes cancer, with the incidence of cancers of the breast, oral cavity, pharynx, and esophagus, among others, increasing significantly among light drinkers.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, for example, now states on its website: “While some studies have found improved health outcomes among moderate drinkers, it’s impossible to conclude whether these improved outcomes are due to moderate alcohol consumption or other differences in behaviors or genetics between people who drink moderately and people who don’t.” The availability of large prospective cohort studies and the advent of whole-genome sequencing technology has allowed researchers to bypass some of the confounding factors that plagued earlier studies, and the results of this “genetic epidemiology” have cast further doubt on the purported protective effects of moderate drinking?

All of this is to say that the evidence in support of moderate alcohol consumption improving cardiovascular health is highly suspect, whereas the scientific evidence linking alcohol consumption to cancer is well-established and growing.

Respected cancer organizations, including the American Institute for Cancer Research and the American Cancer Society, advise not drinking alcohol to reduce cancer risk.

This portrayal has succeeded so well that most consumers in the United States remain unaware of the link between alcohol use and cancer; the American Institute for Cancer Research’s recent survey showed that less than half of U.S.