Study shows Brits drink a lot more booze than they admit

[LastVoter]

http://www.syracuse.com/news/index.ssf/2013/02/study_shows_brits_drink_a_lot.html
I wonder if we can get similar studies for other countries and find actual consumption of alcohol per capita?

[Grumpier Than Uncle Joe]

No one can top Germany, right Kaiser Franzl? 

[Lief 🗽]

No one can top Germany, right Kaiser Franzl? 

Czechia tops Germany quite easily, when you're looking at per capita consumption.

[angus]

omygod.   I just started looking up some stats for alcohol consumption by country, and found that even compared to the average person in those bleak, cold, former communist countries in the East, my consumption is very high.  In fact, by my estimate over three times the average of Moldova, which ranks highest in per-capita annual alcohol consumption. 

[LastVoter]

omygod.   I just started looking up some stats for alcohol consumption by country, and found that even compared to the average person in those bleak, cold, former communist countries in the East, my consumption is very high.  In fact, by my estimate over three times the average of Moldova, which ranks highest in per-capita annual alcohol consumption. 

So you consume like 40-60L of alcohol a year? So like on average 15-20 drinks a day? Steezus

[angus]

I estimated that I drink about 350 bottles (750-mL) per year.  Let's assume, for simplicity, that each of those bottles is 13.5% alcohol by volume.  That alone is over 35 liters.  Now, if we factor in the occasional mixed drink--I rarely drink beer--then we're up to about 40 liters.  According to the World Health Organization, Moldovans consume, on average, 18 liters per year.  I guess that's just a little over twice as much.  And, to be honest, Moldova isn't the best comparison.

Check this out: 

http://www.cnbc.com/id/41990305/15_Countries_That_Consume_The_Most_Alcohol

You can see that Spaniards, Italians, Portuguese, and French drink like I do.  Mostly wine.  Brits, Irish, and Czechs drink mostly beer.  Most former Warsaw Pact nations are into the hard stuff.  Moldovans, on the other hand, split their drinking fairly evenly between beer, wine, and liquor.

[King]

If you drink a 750ml bottle day, it shouldn't surprise you that you're "above average."

[DemPGH]

That's really interesting. I don't consume any appreciable amount of hard liquor during the course of a year, every once in a blue moon a few beers, but as I've said before, wine's my thing as well. I'll guess 275-300 bottles a year, probably closer to 275 because for whatever reason I slow down on it in the summer months. Now I'd hate to figure up what that costs. I don't do cheap stuff, but at least I don't do expensive stuff either. I'd have to figure up an average cost per bottle to get a good ballpark figure.

[angus]

The recommended federal amount for wine is about a half a bottle per day for men, and a little less for women.  This apparently makes some assumptions about the alcohol content of the wine, the mass of the man, etc.  For hard liquor, their recommendation is 3 fluid ounces per day for men.  About 11 percent of US women and 18 percent of US men consume more alcohol than the recommended federal guidelines.

Heavy drinking, according to the government, is more than 72 fluid ounces of wine per week.  (Same assumptions.)  Or more than 21 fluid ounces of hard liquor per week.  About ten percent of US men and about 4 percent of US women drink more than this.  

"Binge" drinking is considered by the government to be consumption, within two hours, of 25 fluid ounces of wine or 7.5 fluid ounces of hard liquor for men, and 20 fluid ounces of wine or 6 fluid ounces of hard liquor for women.  (Why they use fluid ounces I don't know.  Every pharmacist, physician, drug company insert, and nurse prescribes medicines in milliliters, and, as it turns out, wine is sold in 750 milliliter bottles as well.  750 mL is about 25.5 fluid ounces.  For the sake of simplicity, we'll just say that "binge" drinking is one 750-mL bottle of wine in 2 hours.)  Among the 50 percent of US adults who are regular drinkers, 29% of those report "binge" drinking within the past month, usually on multiple occasions.  This results in about 1.5 billion episodes of binge drinking in the United States each year.  Remember, this is all self-reported.  Who knows what the real numbers are.  The point of the thread is that folks don't report these things accurately.  My report is a good faith effort.

Perhaps equally interesting is the fact that most self-reported "binge" drinkers are in the 31-50 year old age group for men, 51-70 years for women.  Either the stereotypical "binge" drinking university students simply aren't self-reporting, or older adults actually do drink more than young adults.

[angus]

The recommended federal amount for wine is about a half a bottle per day...

Also interesting is that this amount hasn't changed over time.  Nero's physician, Galen, circa AD150 advised Nero to drink the equivalent of 12 ounces of red wine per day.  The better the wine, Galen believed, the more medically effective it was.  “Always try to get the best,” he advised in his writings.  That Galen was also the emperor's official food taster may have influenced him, I suppose.  Maybe he knew about the Talmud, which states that "wine is the foremost of all medicine.  Where ever wine is lacking, medicines are necessary."  He may also have been a contemporary of Saint Timothy.  "Use a little wine for thy stomach's sake and thine often infirmities."  (I Tim 5.23)

[DemPGH]

Angus, that's fascinating. My cousin's husband is an M.D. and often says you would have to do some really serious binge drinking to really harm yourself with reference to wine (which is not the same with respect to hard liquor, and he has plenty of reasons why). He tells me to enjoy my wine. Will do, Doc. One of the reasons why medical associations, I read, hesitate to endorse wine-drinking in generous amounts is that they are aware of how much driving Americans do, and they want to discourage alcoholism.

With me, I eat a few healthy snacks (when you consider restaurant portions anyway) during the course of a day, get my run in, then dinner about 6:00 or 6:30 p.m., and honestly after about a half a bottle to 2/3 at the most I'm pretty well buzzed, so I probably wouldn't want to drink much more than half to 2/3 of a bottle although I have consumed an entire bottle in one sitting before.

Galen's advice is still sound - wine doth the body good!

[opebo]

Well, we can establish two facts from angus's tale: he has a lot of disposable income, and his employers don't mind him being an alcoholic.

[angus]

Well, we can establish two facts from angus's tale: he has a lot of disposable income, and his employers don't mind him being an alcoholic.

Inductive, at best.  For all you know I might be taking selections from the bottom shelf.  Also, like DemPGH, I don't drink any alcoholic beverages until after work. 

[opebo]

Well, we can establish two facts from angus's tale: he has a lot of disposable income, and his employers don't mind him being an alcoholic.

Inductive, at best.  For all you know I might be taking selections from the bottom shelf.  Also, like DemPGH, I don't drink any alcoholic beverages until after work. 

So is it an antidote to the miseries of work, or an anodyne to dull the boredom/irritation of breeder lifestyle at home?

[angus]

Well, we can establish two facts from angus's tale: he has a lot of disposable income, and his employers don't mind him being an alcoholic.

Inductive, at best.  For all you know I might be taking selections from the bottom shelf.  Also, like DemPGH, I don't drink any alcoholic beverages until after work. 

So is it an antidote to the miseries of work, or an anodyne to dull the boredom/irritation of breeder lifestyle at home?

[opebo]

So is it an antidote to the miseries of work, or an anodyne to dull the boredom/irritation of breeder lifestyle at home?

Hah, good move, well played!  I hope that doesn't become the automatic response to my every barb now.

[patrick1]

I estimated that I drink about 350 bottles (750-mL) per year.  Let's assume, for simplicity, that each of those bottles is 13.5% alcohol by volume.  That alone is over 35 liters.  Now, if we factor in the occasional mixed drink--I rarely drink beer--then we're up to about 40 liters.  According to the World Health Organization, Moldovans consume, on average, 18 liters per year.  I guess that's just a little over twice as much.  And, to be honest, Moldova isn't the best comparison.

Check this out: 

http://www.cnbc.com/id/41990305/15_Countries_That_Consume_The_Most_Alcohol

You can see that Spaniards, Italians, Portuguese, and French drink like I do.  Mostly wine.  Brits, Irish, and Czechs drink mostly beer.  Most former Warsaw Pact nations are into the hard stuff.  Moldovans, on the other hand, split their drinking fairly evenly between beer, wine, and liquor.

This includes the entire population and not just adult right.  That certainly would dilute the numbers substantially.   Places like Britain, Ireland and Russia would certainly be higher if you measured the consumption of regular drinkers.

I would regularly polish off a 750ml of rum over the course of 3 hours.  Much more if I was out longer or "pacing" myself. Cirrohisis was likely in my future if I didnt quit

[angus]

Wow.  That's impressive.  You must be a big guy.  The few times I tried polishing off a fifth of rum in a single outing I ended up choking on my own vomitus.  It's probably good that you're off the sauce.  I'm having one alcohol-free day per week these days.  I also tried having one coffee-free day per week but I couldn't keep that up. 

Good point about the per capita statistics, but they did control it somewhat.  Here's the report in pdf:

http://www.who.int/substance_abuse/publications/global_alcohol_report/msbgsruprofiles.pdf

As you can see they do divide by the total population aged 15 and over, but even that takes into account a large number of teens, which means that the situation is even bleaker in the former Warsaw Pact countries, especially Moldova, where the population is mostly under 20.  Russia's population pyramid is a bit more like UK and US, with a more even distribution.