While the thought of unwinding with a boozy beverage after a stressful day might be tempting, it might also be hard on health. Having just one drink every day could put people at a higher risk for certain health conditions, according to research published this week.
“Even moderate levels of alcohol use (e.g., one drink per day) are associated with elevated risks of death from liver cirrhosis, esophageal and oral cancers, and injury-related deaths,” said the study, published Monday in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs online. Study authors recommended that both men and women drink no more than one alcoholic beverage per day.
There was an increased risk of premature death from an illness or injury directly attributable to alcohol, though it was small (one in 1,000 people) at one drink per day, per the study results. Additionally, the risk of premature death jumped to one in 25 in people who had two drinks per day.
“Women who had one drink a day were more likely to die of liver cancer or breast cancer than women who did not drink,” said the New York Times’ summary of the findings. “And at one drink a day, both men and women were at increased risk of dying from liver cirrhosis, oral and esophageal cancers and injuries, the paper found. The risks continued to climb with higher levels of consumption.”
According to the New York Times, this study was one of two reports commissioned by the U.S. government during the tenure of former President Joe Biden. The other report, from a panel appointed by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (NSAEM), had a different conclusion, the outlet said.
“It suggested that moderate drinking (up to two drinks a day for men and one for women) was healthier than not drinking at all, although it noted that moderate drinking was also linked to a higher breast cancer risk,” said the Times. However, the outlet also noted that some of the NASEM report panelists had financial ties to the alcohol industry.
President Donald Trump took office in January 2025 and that summer, Audacy reported that dietary guidelines would be changed to have “vaguer” guidance. For decades, the U.S. guidelines recommended that adults limit alcohol consumption to two drinks per day.
When new dietary guidelines were released earlier this year, they did indeed include vague recommendations for “less” alcohol consumption rather than specific drink limits. A review of the guidelines from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health’s Nutrition Source noted that “it’s hard for people to know what ‘less’ actually means,” without specific limits.
This change also received criticism from the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases. In a Jan. 9 statement, the organization expressed “deep concern” about the new guidance.
“While AASLD agrees that broadly consuming less alcohol supports better overall health, the American public deserves clear recommendations based on the best available evidence to guide their consumption choices,” it said. “These guidelines fall short in this respect and deny Americans evidence-based recommendations to make healthy choices.”
Authors of the study published this week believe that the guidelines should have been updated to recommend just one drink per day. They’ve criticized the new guidelines too.
“The new dietary guidelines say that consuming less is better for your health, but don’t say what consuming less means,” said Priscilla Martinez-Matyszczyk, one of the authors of the new paper and the deputy scientific director of the alcohol research group at the nonprofit Public Health Institute, per the 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.”
Robert M. Vincent, the former government official who commissioned the study, said in an editorial that accompanied the new paper that: “after nearly four decades as a public servant, I was separated from federal employment as part of a targeted reduction in force that dismantled much of the federal infrastructure for alcohol prevention and treatment policy.” He also said that the report “produced evidence at odds with powerful commercial interests.”
“A spokeswoman for the Department of Health and Human Services did not respond to a request for comment about Mr. Vincent’s statement,” said the Times.
Regarding the differences between the report published this week and the NASEM study, the Times explained that the latter report “looked at overall death rates of moderate drinkers, including deaths not causally related to alcohol.” Dr. Ned Calonge, an epidemiologist at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus and leader of the NASEM study, said he stood by its conclusions.
“Alcohol research is complex and I am not surprised by different methods producing different results,” he said, according to the Times. Calonge added that modeling studies like the Alcohol Intake and Health Study, which use data to estimate the lifetime risk of diseases and deaths caused by alcohol, also come with potential biases, and he said that he doesn’t “believe anyone should start drinking for health reasons.”
Last summer, Gallup polling showed that Americans’ drinking habits had reached a record low, with 54% of adults reporting that they consume alcohol. Gallup noted that this drop coincided “with a growing belief among Americans that moderate alcohol consumption is bad for one’s health,” which became the majority view for the first time last year.
Those who enjoy an alcoholic beverage from time to time shouldn’t despair at the new study. It did find that one drink per day was associated with a lower risk diabetes for women and a lowered risk of stroke for both men and women, though occasional heavy drinking did remove those benefits.
Other research Audacy reported on this March indicated that not all alcohol is the same when it comes to health. That research indicated that wine in particular had some health benefits when consumed in moderation. For reference, a standard drink is defined as 12 fluid ounces of regular beer, 5 ounces of wine or 1.5 ounces of distilled spirits.
In an email to Audacy, the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States, an industry group, provided the following quote from its Senior Vice President of Science and Research Amanda Berger: “This study was the subject of a Congressional investigation that found it was the product of a flawed, opaque and biased process, with researchers pursuing a predetermined outcome rooted in personal ideologies rather than objective science. The Congressional committee ultimately concluded that the ICCPUD Alcohol Intake and Health study was irretrievably flawed, should be left in its draft form, and should not be considered in the development of the 2025–2030 Dietary Guidelines.”
