The controversial study that drew the ire of beverage-alcohol industry trade groups will not be published, according to several media outlets.
The Alcohol Intake and Health Report was spearheaded by the Interagency Coordinating Committee on the Prevention of Underage Drinking (ICCPUD) as part of the process by which the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee (DGAC) is evaluating alcohol’s place in the 2025 Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA).
Industry groups have spoken out against ICCPUD’s study for more than a year, claiming that it diverged from the normal DGA process, lacked transparency and represented significant overreach. Other complaints included that several of the scientists working on it had “affiliations with international anti-alcohol advocacy groups,” according to a statement from Science Over Bias, a coalition of trade groups and associations across all three tiers and major categories.
An updated DGA is published every five years, and the process is overseen by the U.S. departments of Agriculture (USDA) and Health and Human Services (HHS). For the 2025 to 2030 DGA, the DGAC commissioned two studies about alcohol consumption. The bev-alc industry embraced the other, which was from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM).
A draft of ICCPUD’s Alcohol Intake and Health Study shared in January found that “the risk of dying from alcohol use begins at low levels of average use,” and that “higher levels of alcohol consumption are linked with progressively higher mortality risk.” The NASEM’s report painted a gentler picture, noting that moderate drinkers had a 16% lower risk of all-cause mortality (dying from any cause) than non-drinkers, but called out a link to higher instances of breast cancer in women who practiced moderate consumption.
According to Vox, which broke the news of the ICCPUD study’s shelving, the study’s co-authors learned last month their work would not be published in full, nor would it be included in DGA work or an upcoming congressional report about underage drinking. The co-authors interviewed by Vox said they plan to publish their work in an academic journal.
The move to bury the ICCPUD study comes at a time when more consumers are reconsidering their relationship with alcohol. Last month, a record-low 54% of American adults reported consuming alcoholic beverages in Gallup’s annual drinking habits survey.
Outside the U.S., institutional drumbeats over alcohol’s potentially harmful effects on health have grown louder. In 2023, the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction recommended that Canadians limit themselves to two drinks per week regardless of gender. Around the same time, the World Health Organization announced “no level of alcohol consumption is safe” for health.
One ICCPUD study co-author – Priscilla Martinez, deputy scientific director of the Public Health Institute’s Alcohol Research Group – told Vox she was “hopeful” the Alcohol Intake and Health Report would have given Americans the context that consumers in other countries already have. Without the findings of the study, which modeled health outcomes for men and women based on various levels of daily consumption, Martinez worried consumers won’t have the full picture.
“People are going to get sick who might have avoided getting sick, because they might have decreased their drinking,” she told Vox.
Science Over Bias has not updated its website since news broke that the ICCPUD study was shelved. A spokesperson for the organization has not responded to a request for comment as of press time.
The Brewers Association (BA), which is among the scores of organizations listed on Science Over Bias, made the following statement to Brewbound:
“The Brewers Association is pleased that the secretaries of Agriculture and Health & Human Services have upheld the integrity of the DGA to promote informed and responsible decision-making around alcohol by providing Americans with real facts and withdrawing the flawed and biased ICCPUD study from the process.”
The updated DGA for 2025-2030 has not been released yet, and no timeline has been shared. Trade groups previously expected the guidelines in late July.