Alcohol & you
Sensible drinking
Many of us enjoy a drink or two and find it helps us to relax and socialise. While this shouldn’t do you too much harm, regularly overdoing it is associated with various health risks. Sensible drinking means knowing what your limits are and being aware of how much you’re drinking. It’s key to understand how to enjoy alcohol in moderation as part of a healthy lifestyle
How much is too much?
Proposed new guidelines recommend that you should not regularly drink more than 14 units over the course of a week. If you do drink as much as 14 units, you should spread it over three days or more, rather than having all at once. Also minimum of three alcohol free days a week.
An easy way to cut back on your intake is to have several drink-free days each week.
How many units in your drink?
Alcohol levels in a drink are expressed as ‘percentage alcohol by volume’ . Some brands also give the number of units of alcohol the drink contains on the packaging.
One unit is equal to 10ml by volume or 8g by weight, of pure alcohol. This is the amount of alcohol an average adult can process in one hour.
The number of units of alcohol in different drinks varies. It’s also rare that the usual measure your drink comes in will contain just one unit. Here are some common drinks you might order at the bar and how many units they contain.
Each of the follwing units have about one unit of alcohol
Champagne/wine 100ml 13% Alcohol
Regular Beer 285ml 5% Alcohol
Fortified wine 60ml 20% Alcohol
Hard liquor/spirits 30ml 40% Alcohol
Something else to bear in mind is that the same type of drink can vary in strength between different brands. For example, some wines and lagers contain more alcohol than others. What’s more, bars and restaurants offer a variety of measures. Here are some examples.
If you drink three 250ml glasses of wine, you’re drinking a whole bottle of wine and three times the recommended daily units. It can be easy to do without even realising it !
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