by Martin Field
Headlines over recent months have featured horror stories about alcohol abuse, binge drinking, and general overindulgence in our favourite legal drug.
Some stories have ludicrously blamed the size of wine glasses for excessive boozing. For example, “MP calls for smaller wine glasses” and, “Wine glasses blamed for women drinking large alcohol amounts.”
I’m totally unconvinced that standardising the size of wine glasses is going to stop boozing and I don’t believe that proposals to change the official guidelines for the recommended number of standard drinks per day will have any effect whatsoever.
Well-meaning bureaucrats introduced mandatory standard drink labelling in Australia years ago, but nobody I know takes the slightest bit of notice of it.
The idea is, I think, that you read the label, see how many standard drinks a bottle contains and then adjust your drinking in accordance with National Health and Medical Research Council daily drinking guidelines. Well that isn’t going to happen.
Standard drinks in various beverages and wine styles vary enormously. In a large group at dinner, some might start with stubbies of beer – typically up to 1.5 standard drinks. Someone will order a cocktail, maybe up to two standard drinks in one glass. A bottle of Hunter Valley semillon at ten percent alcohol might be ordered – this will contain about six standard drinks. The next bottle could be a massive South Australian red at 15.5 percent alcohol – containing just over nine standard drinks.
And in bars and restaurants there are no standard wine glass sizes – they seem to range from maybe 120mls, to the size of mini goldfish bowls. Some are marked to a measured level, some are not. Wine waiters tend to overpour wine in the hope that you’ll buy another bottle and, anyway, thirsty or thrifty diners tend to finish any bottle left on the table before paying the bill, no matter how many glasses they’ve had.
The only way to track the number of standard drinks in this situation would be to have a scorer (preferably the designated driver) with a laptop using a spreadsheet and a scientific calculator.
Most people I know track their drinking by weighing how much fun they’re having against the chances of suffering cirrhosis of the liver or how likely they are to blow more than the legal limit on a breathalyser while driving home.
You don’t have to be a doctor or a bureaucrat to know that chronic alcohol abuse is caused by physical dependence, combined with serious psychological problems, combined with the availability of cheap booze. Like, for example, four litre casks of port for under twenty bucks.
I’m quite sure though, that large wine glasses are not the cause of alcohol abuse or binge drinking. Standard drinks labelling and recommended daily drinking guidelines are clearly not the answer either.
I don’t claim to know how to prevent alcohol abuse. Maybe increasing taxes on cheap bulk wine would be a start.
Standard drink formula
Formula: size of container in litres, multiplied by .789 (specific gravity of alcohol), multiplied by the alcoholic strength of the wine. Take, for example, a 750ml bottle of wine containing 13.5% alcohol (by volume), thus, .75 x .789 x 13.5 = 8 standard drinks.