If you and your significant other were to drink five bottles of wine a week
That's 12 1/2 to 15 glasses of wine a week. I'm hardly a teetotaler, but that seems excessive.
That's 12 1/2 to 15 glasses of wine a week. I'm hardly a teetotaler, but that seems excessive.
It may depend on your upbringing. In the modern US, particularly the more puritan regions, any alcohol at all is usually considered a luxury reserved for celebration, but in some parts of the world, wine or beer is just the drink you drink with a meal, and there's less of a stigma about it. If it's not your thing, it's not your thing, but applying the label "excess" is a pretty specifically cultural decision.
A bottle is at least 25 ounces. Split between two people, that's 2.5 to 3.125 glasses of wine per person per bottle. 5 times a week, that's 12.5 to over 15 ounces.
I'm in the US, but from an Italian family. Wine was on the table often, especially around my extended family. I enjoy whiskey, and I've been into savory hard ciders since I found out beer is out of the question. Like I said, hardly a teetotaler.
Yet I'm under no illusions that drinking 15 servings of alcohol a week regularly is recommended. If someone were drinking that much, that consistently, their physician would definitely recommend that they cut their consumption considerably.
http://www.niaaa.nih.gov/alcohol-health/overview-alcohol-con...
Anyhow, that sort of consumption is pretty average in many parts of the world, Europe for example. And far from excessive.
The highest consumption of alcohol is Estonia, at 415.9oz of pure alcohol a year. Taking wine at 12% alcohol content, that's 3,465oz per year. That's 9.49oz per day.
I simply disagree that matching the highest consumption rate in the world is recommended, especially when a country like Italy , among one of the top wine producing countries, is at half that rate.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_alcohol_co...
For instance France is barely behind Estonia, and half a dozen other countries are within a litre/year.