Beer Marketer's Insights - Dietary Guidelines Delayed to December, RFK Sez; Focus on Fat, Off Alcohol?

It's still too early to say for sure that the next edition of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans won't drastically reduce recommendations for adult alcohol intake or instruct folks to cut it out altogether. Promises that the 2025-2030 edition of the DGA would be released this summer seem to have jumped the gun a bit. The Guidelines won't be released until next month, a more normal schedule, Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr shared during an Oval Office event with President Trump this week. Reporters gathered at the White House for the president to announce a deal with a pair of major drug companies to reduce the price of weight loss drugs like Ozempic. It served to highlight RFK's ongoing focus on obesity: "if we want to solve the chronic disease crisis, we have to tackle obesity," he commented. It follows a possibly counterintuitive shift in focus and a different set of promises made by the administration in recent weeks: that the guidelines would encourage consumption of more saturated fats. In addition to suggesting a sharp change from prior editions of the document, RFK's positive comments about saturated fats generally &mdash; and certain meat and certain oils (like beef tallow) especially &mdash; has alarmed some nutrition experts. One USDA director flatly told The Hill late last month that "we consume too much saturated fat."In reporting this week, Reuters closed its piece on RFK's comments with a note about current alcohol guidance. But there hasn't been any mention of alcohol's place in the guidelines since the same outlet suggested over the summer that the next DGA could pull back entirely on any specific drink-per-day recommendation as part of a much shorter, streamlined document. Even if it's too early to confirm that the industry is completely out of the woods, it's safe to say that it's not in the crosshairs, at least in the way it was through much of 2024.That said, the industry appears to have averted a more global policy crisis not altogether separate from the DGA. The WHO raised alarm about industry interference in the development of the UN's still pending declaration on noncommunicable diseases, recall. But the draft statement continues to focus on "harmful use" and does not incorporate the WHO's "no safe level" rhetoric. At the UN's high level meeting in late September, RFK torpedoed the declaration's adoption by consensus, but not because he agreed with the WHO's assertions. Many other delegates spoke in favor of the policy statement, which the body is set to vote on this month, with no outward sign of meaningful change.A year and a half ago (or more), advocates on either side of the debate foresaw a different possible outcome. Frustrated by their lack of success lowering drinking recommendations for the current edition of the DGA, released in late 2020, alcohol-focused public health advocates turned their attention to the next edition. In addition to domestic health goals, many of the same individuals play large roles in global anti-alcohol advocacy. So work on the DGA has always partially aimed at counting the powerful US among the countries that could help successfully lobby for stricter language in UN documents like the NCD declaration.Connections to the relatively small Interagency Coordinating Committee for the Prevention of Underage Drinking offered the opportunity to get a different result for this 2025-2030 edition of the DGA. By 2022, some of the most globally plugged-in advocate-researchers were on board to conduct unique research designed to inform the DGA that mirrored work some of the same folks were doing for Canada. A one-two punch from North America could prove influential on the global stage, after all. By the time the ICCPUD project became more public in early 2024, the presidential election cycle was in full swing. Public health advocates tend to favor and be favored by Democratic leadership. Did they envision a very different stance from the US on alcohol if the election went the other way? Instead, the Trump Admin slashed the HHS workforce, threw the public health establishment into disarray and turned focus away from alcohol.Look forward to seeing you at our Beer Insights Seminar on Monday! The program features an up-tempo exploration of "The Issue with Alcohol." Join us if you can! Cheers,

Dietary Guidelines Delayed to December, RFK Sez; Focus on Fat, Off Alcohol?

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