Biden-era health officials quietly urged limiting adult alcohol intake as Trump takes reins for new guidance

America’s dietary guidelines on alcohol consumption hang in the balance after months of controversy under the Biden administration involving a quiet push to enforce rules advising “the risk of dying from alcohol use begins at low levels of average use.”

After congressional subpoenas went unanswered under the Biden administration regarding a health panel’s alleged “secretive process” examining the health effects of alcohol consumption, Trump officials are ready to release a comprehensive set of dietary guidelines, including alcohol consumption, by August, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy said at a House hearing Wednesday. 

Kennedy said his department will take a nearly 500-page document from the Biden era and whittle it down to four pages that are free of “industry” input. 

“We are about to reissue the dietary guidelines, and we’re going to do it very quickly. We have until January … I think we’ll have it done even before August,” Kennedy said. “And we took the Biden guidelines, which were 453 pages long and were clearly written by industry that are incomprehensible, driven by the same industry capture and those kind of carnal impulses that put Froot Loops at the top of the food pyramid. And we are changing that. So we’re going to have four-page dietary guidelines that tell people, essentially, eat whole food, eat the food that’s good for you.” 

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Robert F. Kennedy endorsed Trump for president before he was tapped to lead the Department of Health and Human Services. (Rebecca Noble/Getty Images)

The Departments of Agriculture and Health and Human Services release the Dietary Guidelines for Americans every five years, which also include a guide to drinking alcohol. 

In the first edition of the guide in 1980, health leaders advised that consuming one to two glasses of alcohol per day appears “to cause no harm in adults,” before the 1990 edition advised that women should not drink more than one glass of alcohol per day and a two-glass cap for men, Fox News Digital found. 

The guidelines have remained unchanged since 1990 as they concern adult drinking, until a push to lower the recommended level of drinking in 2020, which was rejected by the first Trump administration and then subsequently amplified under the Biden administration. 

The guides have been previously developed through a multistep process, including a Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee of experts reviewing scientific research to help craft the rules. For the 2025 guidelines, Congress directed the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine to publish an independent study on the process to craft the official guide, while a second study conducted by a group focused on preventing underage drinking was commissioned. 

In 2020, the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee advised that the first Trump administration’s USDA and HHS publish a guideline with stricter rules surrounding alcohol, specifically that both men and women should not have more than one drink per day. The Trump administration rejected the advice for the official dietary guide release that year, but the issue persisted. 

Sitting on the 2020 advisory committee under the Trump administration was a doctor named Timothy Naimi, who currently serves as the director of the University of Victoria’s Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research. 

“During the last Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee (DGAC) process, the DGAC suggested reducing the level recommended for health from 2 drinks to 1 drink for men based on the best available evidence,” Naimi told Fox News Digital in an emailed comment Thursday.

He added that the federal government rejecting the committee’s advice “is how the process works.”

“The scientists develop a background report and the federal agencies weigh various factors and write the actual guidelines which are based on a variety of considerations,” he explained. “As you know, each round scientific conclusions or recommendations may or may not be adopted by the federal agencies.” 

After the Trump administration rejected stricter guides on drinking, Naimi made a return to advising the U.S. government on drinking levels under the Biden administration. 

Moderate drinking was once thought to have benefits for the heart, but better research methods starting in the 2010s have thrown cold water on that. (David J. Phillip/File/Associated Press)

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The Biden administration in 2022 tapped the health committee focused on underage drinking to craft a report related to adult drinking for the upcoming dietary guidelines. Naimi was on the panel, as well as a World Health Organization official, and experts on mental health, epidemiology and anesthesiology, the draft report shows. 

The Biden administration in 2022 tapped the health committee focused on underage drinking to craft a report related to adult drinking for the upcoming dietary guidelines. (Evan Vucci/Associated Press)

Called the Interagency Coordinating Committee on the Prevention of Underage Drinking, ICCPUD was founded in 2004 to “coordinate all federal agency activities related to the problem of underage drinking.”

Congress did not approve ICCPUD to conduct a study on adult drinking to help craft the nation’s dietary standards, which led to outrage from lawmakers of both political parties, including the retired Democrat congresswoman who advocated for ICCPUD’s creation. 

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“As expressly stated in the STOP Act, ICCPUD’s authority and oversight are specifically related to underage drinking priorities. ICCPUD was never intended to participate in activities related to adult alcohol consumption,” former California Democrat Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard, who sponsored the Sober Truth on Preventing Underage Drinking (STOP) Act that formalized ICCPUD, wrote in a letter to HHS and USDA in August 2024.

Republican Kentucky Rep. James Comer subpoenaed then-HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra and then-U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Thomas Vilsack in September 2024 for documents related to the development of the 2025 Dietary Guidelines for Americans and how the administration tapped ICCPUD to conduct research without congressional input. 

Days later, in October 2024, more than 100 members of Congress from both political parties wrote a letter to HHS and USDA demanding the suspension of the ICCPUD study until the congressionally approved National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM) study on alcohol consumption was published. 

Rep. James Comer took the Biden administration to task in fall 2024 over its handling of the dietary guidelines. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

“As you are aware, Congress appropriated $1.3 million to the USDA in the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2023 and directed the National Academies to assemble a committee of experts to review, evaluate and report on current scientific evidence related to alcohol consumption and specific health outcomes that would inform guidance in the 2025 Dietary Guidelines. Once the NASEM scientific study has concluded, Congress can provide input on the need for an additional study on adult alcohol consumption from ICCPUD or another entity within HHS,” the large group of bipartisan lawmakers wrote at the time. 

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The lawmakers continued that they were concerned that the ICCPUD panel was not “appropriately vetted for conflicts of interest,” calling the panel’s operations “secretive.” 

“The secretive process at ICCPUD and the concept of original research on adult alcohol consumption by a committee tasked with preventing underage drinking, jeopardizes the credibility of ICCPUD and its ability to continue its primary role of helping the nation prevent underage drinking,” they continued. 

Dueling draft studies were then released in the waning days of the Biden administration. ICCPUD found in its draft report that “the risk of dying from alcohol use begins at low levels of average use.”

The congressionally approved NASEM study, published in December 2024, meanwhile, found that “compared with never consuming alcohol, moderate alcohol consumption is associated with lower all-cause mortality.” (Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call via Getty Images)

The congressionally approved NASEM study, published in December 2024, meanwhile, found that “compared with never consuming alcohol, moderate alcohol consumption is associated with lower all-cause mortality.”

Naimi told Fox News Digital in an emailed comment Thursday that the ICCPUD study was “top shelf” when it came to the science behind it, adding that having multiple reports, such as both the NASEM and ICCPUD studies, examining the effects of alcohol is “good science.”

“The study used the best and standard epidemiological methods, and used the best meta-analyses of the relationship between alcohol and a range of conditions,” he said. “Those studies were selected by a consensus process of external topic area experts based on having lots of scientific publications in any particular disease relevant to alcohol. Then those risks were applied to the latest mortality data from the US to establish the lifetime risk for men and women across all levels of consumption.” 

“Consumption of 2 drinks per day for men does increase their risk of death, however. At that level, approximately in 25 persons (4%) of men would have an alcohol-caused death. It’s important to inform the public about this sort of thing so folks can make informed decisions,” Naimi added of the draft report’s findings related to adult alcohol consumption.

Biden administration Surgeon General Vivek Murthy additionally bolstered calls to limit alcohol in January when he warned that alcohol consumption is linked to cancer. 

“Alcohol is a well-established, preventable cause of cancer responsible for about 100,000 cases of cancer and 20,000 cancer deaths annually in the United States – greater than the 13,500 alcohol-associated traffic crash fatalities per year in the US – yet the majority of Americans are unaware of this risk,” Murthy said in a January statement. 

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The WHO, notably, released a statement in 2022, declaring that “no level of alcohol consumption is safe for our health.”

“The risks and harms associated with drinking alcohol have been systematically evaluated over the years and are well documented,” the World Health Organization said in a press release. “The World Health Organization has now published a statement in The Lancet Public Health: when it comes to alcohol consumption, there is no safe amount that does not affect health.” 

There’s significant medical debate about the net positives, if any, of moderate drinking. (Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images)

Comer released an April statement underscoring that the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, which he chairs, is still investigating the matter despite the Biden administration snubbing subpoenas for more details, and he additionally sent letters to Kennedy and USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins requesting they provide “documents and communications relevant to our investigation and a staff-level briefing on the status of the formation of alcohol recommendations for the 2025 Dietary Guidelines” from the Biden era. 

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“As HHS works alongside USDA to finalize the 2025 Dietary Guidelines, it is imperative that Congress and the American people have the utmost confidence in the scientific support determining the Dietary Guidelines. The National Nutrition Monitoring Act requires the Dietary Guidelines to be ‘based on the preponderance of the scientific and medical knowledge which is current at the time the report is prepared.’ Therefore, we write to request that HHS provide the Committee with documents and communications relevant to our investigation and a staff-level briefing on the status of the formation of alcohol recommendations for the 2025 Dietary Guidelines,” Comer wrote.