Another official study indicating that alcohol is not necessarily a risk for cancer

I have written quite a few blog posts about the possible relationships between alcohol and particular health issues, particularly cancer, because this has become a big issue for a number of health organizations (see: Has WHO got it wrong with its new zero-alcohol policy?). My own reading of the primary literature is that wine is one of the least problematic causes of cancer, unless consumed in excess of the recommended doses. I have listed some of my relevant posts at the bottom of this page.

In this new post, I will point out another recent official publication from the USA that indicates there is a lack of evidence regarding a link between alcohol and cancer, in particular:

Review of Evidence on Alcohol and Health (2025).

Here is the Introduction from the review:

The Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA), which serves as the primary source of dietary guidance from the federal government, provides recommendations for dietary intake and healthful dietary patterns — including alcohol intake. DGA recommendations are informed by systematic reviews. The last review on alcohol and health conducted for the DGA focused on all-cause mortality in 2020; however, questions related to weight changes, cancer, cardiovascular disease, neurocognitive health, and lactation have not been examined since 2010.

Hence this new Review was produced. It is broken into a number of sections, each of which concludes with a set of Findings, and a set of Conclusions. Here I will list here a few of the relevant conclusions.

For the section on All-Cause Mortality, they have:

• Conclusion 3-1: Based on data from the eight eligible studies from 2019 to 2023, the committee concludes that compared with never consuming alcohol, moderate alcohol consumption is associated with lower all-cause mortality (moderate certainty).

This sounds very good to me — a small amount of alcohol intake lowers mortality.

For the section specifically about Cancer, they have several conclusions:

• Conclusion 5-1: The committee concludes that compared with never consuming alcohol, consuming a moderate amount of alcohol was associated with a higher risk of breast cancer (moderate certainty).
• Conclusion 5-2: The committee concluded that, among moderate alcohol consumers, higher versus lower amounts of moderate alcohol consumption were associated with a higher risk of breast cancer (low certainty).
• Conclusion 5-3: The committee determined that no conclusion could be drawn regarding the association between moderate alcohol consumption compared with lifetime nonconsumers and risk of colorectal cancer.
• Conclusion 5-4: The committee concluded that among moderate alcohol consumers higher versus lower amounts of moderate alcohol consumption were associated with a higher risk of colorectal cancer (low certainty).
• Conclusion 5-5: The committee determined that no conclusion could be drawn regarding an association between moderate alcohol consumption and oral cavity, pharyngeal, esophageal, or laryngeal cancers.

Once again, this all seems pretty reasonable to me — a lot of the relevant commentary is about lack of evidence for any relationships, which situation the Review takes very seriously.

In support of this, the table above is from The IARC perspective on alcohol reduction or cessation and cancer risk (IARC = International Agency for Research on Cancer). It lists the biggest issues about the same cancer studies discussed by the Review, indicating that there is insufficient formal evidence regarding a link of alcohol to cancer, for several parts of our bodies. If there is insufficient evidence, then how are any of us arriving at any conclusions that problems exist?

Here are some of my previous posts from this year about this topic (in publication order):

1. Current medical evidence says that wine is not harmful in small doses
2. Recent study shows that alcohol does have an important benefit in older age 
3. Recent science reports suggesting that wine alcohol is usually safe to drink
4. Contrary to WHO, recent medical research shows that wine is safe for cancer
5. Medical research concerning heart disease indicates that wines are safe to drink
6. More medical results suggesting that wines are usually safe to drink