If you’re a man thinking about ordering that second beer or glass of wine with your pizza, the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee (DGAC) recommends you reconsider. This group of nanny-state bureaucrats has suddenly decreed that the definition of what constitutes “moderate” alcohol consumption for both men and women should top out at one drink per day, a rather extreme conclusion.

If anyone is wondering why they should care about the pronouncements of an obscure advisory committee, the answer is that we all should, as the effects of this misguided policy recommendation could ripple out in many unpleasant and unexpected ways. Thankfully a diverse coalition of the sane and the informed is pushing back.

The standoff was instigated by the DGAC’s once every five-year duty on behalf of the Departments of Agriculture and Health and Human Services (HHS) to prepare dietary guidelines recommendations based on the most current scientific data. This year they cut their 2015 recommendation of what constitutes “moderate” daily alcohol consumption for men in half to one drink per day while leaving the recommendation for women unaltered. The problem is the preponderance of scientific evidence does not support this change, which is the standard required in the DGAC’s charter.

Instead, the committee’s recommendation leans on only one of sixty available studies approved for review and on several unapproved academic papers that focus on the dangers of high alcohol intake (binge drinking). Studies that focus on heavy drinking are irrelevant to setting guidelines relating to low-intake, high-frequency consumption. In effect, the DGAC has abandoned its role of providing verifiable, scientifically based data. This recommendation is bad policy, clearly aimed at steering an outcome instead of providing health information.

In response to this rogue approach, five U.S. senators and nearly 30 representatives sent a letter to secretaries of Agriculture and Health and Human Services asking them to explain their process and the “lack of scientific evidence” behind their recommendation. Numerous other medical and health experts have weighed in, including five Harvard scientists (three of whom were past DGAC members) who called the recommendation “arbitrary,” and Christopher Snowden of the Institute of Economic Affairs in London, who called the proposed change “stealth prohibition.”

Read full article here: