‘Moderate’ drinking guidelines are too loose, study says

By Joel Achenbach
April 12

A sweeping international study of alcohol consumption has found no overall health benefits from moderate drinking and calls into question the U.S. guidelines that say men can safely drink twice as much as women. The threshold for low-risk drinking, the researchers found, is about seven beers a week for men and women alike.

The new report, published Thursday in the Lancet and boasting 120 co-authors, aggregated data from multiple studies of drinking patterns and health outcomes among nearly 600,000 people in 19 high-income countries.

Strikingly, the data did not show a significant difference between men and women in the amount of alcohol that can be consumed without a drop in life expectancy. That directly contradicts U.S. government guidelines that define moderate, “low-risk” drinking as two drinks a day for men and one drink for women, with a limit of 14 a week for men and seven for women — with lower levels for people over the age of 65.

There’s a transatlantic difference of opinion about drinking limits for men and women. Two years ago, the United Kingdom revised its moderate-drinking guidelines, reducing the limits for men to the same level as those for women. The new study says the United Kingdom got it just about right.

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