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Comment by lelf | Hacker News Reader

Quite surprising for me too. Or rather, I don't understand the unit they mention. From the article linked:

also collected alcoholic beverage consumption, including red and white wine separately (4 ounces, increasing to 5 ounces in 2006), beer (one glass, can, or bottle), and liquor (one drink or shot). We multiplied the amount of alcohol in grams per specified portion size by servings per day, determined the midpoint of the frequency category, and summed across all beverages to estimate the average alcohol consumption (g/day). We defined moderate alcohol consumption as 5-15 g/day for women and 5-30 g/day for men

Surely it cannot be 4 bottles of beer daily (or 4*7 bottles on weekend).

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This left me confused as well. This NHS article on alcohol abuse cleared it up, though: https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/alcohol-misuse/

> A unit of alcohol is 8g or 10ml of pure alcohol, which is about:

> half a pint of lower to normal-strength lager/beer/cider (ABV 3.6%) > a single small shot measure (25ml) of spirits (25ml, ABV 40%)

So a 12oz bottle (.75 pint) of 3.6% beer would be 1.5 NHS units. A bottle of 7.2% stout would be 3 units. A full 4 units per day would require a bottle of strong 9.6% beer, or two bottles of a 4.8%.

While less eye-popping than four bottles a day, that still seems like a lot of drinking to me, especially if concentrated around a few days. That's 14 bottles of 4.8% beer per week, so imagine four beers on a Wednesday, seven on Friday night, and another three over the weekend after the hangover's worn off – week after week. That seems like it would have to have a health impact, and it's surprising to see it as the limit for "moderate" drinking.

It is a lot. Recent advice (2016) cut the limits for men down to 14 units a week. The advice has always included recommendations to have some days drink free, and not to save the units up to drink more on one day.

Ah. A USA "drink" is 15ml, so 1.5 UK units.

That still seems like a lot to me. I've always heard that 2 "drinks" is the limit for being able to drive, and it seems that drinking "during the day" (before dinner) is culturally frowned upon, so taking the advice of 2-3 "drinks"/day would mean you're at the limit every evening. If you have one or more sober days, you'd be over the limit every non-sober day if you do it in one sitting.

That being said, I don't drink, so I don't know for certainly what is culturally acceptable, I'm just going based on observations (lunches and dinners with coworkers and whatnot). However, this seems like it could be used to justify poor behavior, especially for health conscious individuals who like to check off boxes.

A bottle of beer (say 500ml) at 5% strength would be 2.5 units, so not as much as 4 bottles a day [1]. Also worth noting that alcohol you buy in shops in the UK has the number of units printed on the label, so it's fairly easy to keep track of.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_of_alcohol

A standard bottle of beer is 330ml to 375 ml. 500ml is closer to an imperial pint @ ~17 oz. That's roughly the size of an American "pint"

Here in Europese standard bottle /can sizes are 250, 300/330 and 500ml. The former are more common west of the Rhine, the 500ml is the standard East of it

A unit is 10ml of pure alcohol, roughly half a pint of 4% beer or half a glass of wine. This unit value is printed clearly on pretty much all alcohol containers. (In the US it seems incredibly difficult to find the ABV % for the drinks you buy.)

A bottle of beer is usually 330ml so 1.3 units, so moderate drinking would be defined as up to 2 pints or 3 bottles of 4% beer daily.

I believe ABV is printed on every alcohol label in the US (I suspect there is a regulation mandating it)

While most does, at least the box of Heineken in my fridge (don't judge me, left over from a party!) doesn't have the ABV on the box, though does on the cans inside.

To find the units you multiply the serving size in litres by the number for the ABV.

So, a 250 ml glass of wine at 12% ABV is 0.25 * 12 = 3 units.

In the past when units were created wine was about 8% ABV, and a serving size was about 125 ml, which gives 0.125 * 8 = 1 unit per glass. When you see advice saying "one small glass of wine is about 1 unit" it's a bit misleading, because currently in the UK one small glass is going to be about 175 ml, and the ABV is going to be about 12%, which gives about 2 units per glass.

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