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In January, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Health and Human Services secretary, announced the updated U.S. Department of Agriculture dietary guidelines. These recommendations not only furthered the Trump administration’s dangerously misinformed Make America Healthy Again agenda but also removed any federal guidelines for alcohol consumption in one fell swoop.
The 2020-2025 dietary guidelines advised Americans to consume either no alcohol, or no more than one drink a day for women and two for men to “help Americans move toward a healthy dietary pattern and minimize risks associated with drinking.”
These risks to human health have long been recognized. Evidence shows higher average alcohol consumption is linked to increased risk of liver disease, cardiovascular disease, injuries, alcohol use disorders and death “from all causes.”
Flying in the face of these facts, the new 2025-2030 Dietary Guidelines for Americans eschews actionable advice for alcohol consumption altogether. Instead of providing quantifiable recommendations like the document does for consumption of food groups like vegetables — encouraging “three servings per day” — it simply suggests you “consume less alcohol for better overall health.” Despite a few caveats for special cases like pregnancy, medications and alcohol use disorders or a family history of them, the guidelines are vague and largely unhelpful.
The USDA’s negligence disregards its duty to “be a model department that serves all people of our great Nation,” as stated under “Our Vision” on the USDA website. Instead, by obscuring the dangers of alcohol consumption, the USDA forfeits this responsibility to serve all people by providing credible, direct nutritional information. The MAHA Commission also promotes misinformation on vaccines and fluoride, cut budgets of integral agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and National Institutes of Health, and undermines food safety standards. This administration is no stranger to misleading health messaging.
How does the government support all the lies? Apparently, by exploiting previously debunked pseudoscience. Shocker. In a Jan. 7 White House briefing, Dr. Mehmet Oz — the administrator for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services — addressed the vague new federal guidelines on alcohol consumption.
Oz explained the pared-down guidelines by calling alcohol a “social lubricant.” But even something as simple as food can be a social lubricant too; Oz’s hypocrisy was overt, saying “I don’t think you should drink alcohol, but…” and, in a willful ignorance of the truth, claimed there was insufficient data to support the 2020-25 alcohol consumption guidelines. Most dangerously, Oz’s address failed to cite the deadly risks associated with high levels of alcohol consumption then turned around and cited the pseudoscientific Blue Zones.
The misleading assumption is this: individuals in Blue Zones — the areas of the world with the highest life expectancies — include small amounts of alcohol in their regular diet and therefore so should we. You might assume that a government official wouldn’t trick the American public into believing junk science that sounds correct but really had already been debunked back in 2024, and you would be wrong.
The idea that diet explains longevity in Blue Zones is as fantastical as the zones themselves. Demographer at University College London, Dr. Saul Newman, found that the Okinawans of Japan’s “Blue Zone” eat less vegetables and sweet potatoes than the rest of Japan, yet the study claimed these foods explained the Okinawans’ longevity. What’s more, “poverty and pressure to commit pension fraud,” instead of diet or other lifestyle variables, as the assumption goes, “were shown to be excellent indicators of reaching ages 100+ in a way that is ‘the opposite of rational expectations.’”
It was findings like these, that revealed such outlandishly foundational flaws in extreme old-age studies like “Blue Zones” that aptly won him the Ig Nobel in Demography — a Nobel Prize parody celebrating scientific research that “makes people laugh, and then think” — in September 2024.
Despite Oz’s claims, there has always been and there still is good data against alcohol use. In fact, according to the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases, recent research has caused experts to argue the government should recommend even less than one daily drink for women or two for men for better health. Oz may currently serve in the government, but he hails from days peddling unfounded alternative medicine and pop science on reality shows like “The Oprah Winfrey Show” and his own “The Dr. Oz Show.” So, it’s no surprise that he leans on pseudoscience.
“Many believe he (Oz) is doing great harm by preventing or delaying proper diagnosis, providing false hope, and encouraging people to waste money on useless treatments,” wrote Steven Dell in 2015 for The Journal of the Missouri State Medical Association.
Now, in 2026, he spreads the misinformation of new alcohol guidelines and supports it with further misinformation like “Blue Zones,” all putting Americans in danger by adding chaos and confusion to already muddled information.
“Simply put, Oz is an entertainer,” wrote Dell. It’s important to call a spade a spade, and more importantly to call a hack a hack. And Dr. Oz is the hack of the highest order, causing harm from a position of power.
Odessa Lyon (she/her) is a senior studying biology and English, pursuing a minor in European studies.
