Booze calculator: What's your drinking nationality?

How does your drinking measure up to the average in countries around the world? Find out below if you are similar to a boozy Belarusian or a teetotal Kuwaiti.

What is meant by 'other' drinks?

Alcoholic drinks made from malted barley count as beer, those from fermented grapes as wine, and all distilled drinks are categorised as spirits.

But that leaves out a lot of sources of alcohol. So cider, made from apples or pears, or sake, made from rice, are separated out into the "other" category by the World Health Organization, which compiles the drinks data published on this page.

Beer made from sorghum would also fall into the "other" category, which is why this category is dominant in large parts of sub-Saharan Africa - sorghum is a grain that thrives in hot climates and can withstand harsh droughts.

Fortified wines such as port, made with a hybrid fermentation process that includes distillation, are separated from regular wine and listed as "other" by the WHO.

About the calculator

The closest-matching country calculation is based on a comparison of your data with the average alcohol consumption of beer, wine, spirits and all other drinks lumped together for the entire population of each country in the WHO's data: men, women, drinkers and non-drinkers of all ages over 15.

It assumes, as the WHO does, that the average pint of beer or cider is 5% alcohol by volume, that wine is typically 12%, that spirits are 40%, fortified wines are 17.5%, and sake 9%.

About the data

The WHO collates and publishes country-level data on overall per-capita alcohol consumption, broken down by type of drink, which is based on tax receipts or import-export data. In countries where these sorts of official statistics are unavailable, industry data is used instead.

In addition to this, the organisation tries to quantify the amount of "unrecorded" alcohol consumed, which may have been home-brewed or smuggled into the country - or taken from sources not intended for human consumption.

This second category, which the WHO reports is larger than the official category in some countries - and highest of all in Moldova - is underpinned by survey data or, if all else fails, "expert opinion".

As a consequence, the statistics on this page are not without uncertainty. For full details on methods and confidence intervals, please see the WHO website.

Roughly how many units of alcohol are in each drink?

• Single shot of spirits (25ml): 1 unit
• Standard (175ml) glass of wine: 2.1 units
• Large (250ml) glass of wine: 3 units
• Pint of 4%-strength beer: 2.3 units
• Pint of 5%-strength beer: 2.8 units
• Pint of strong cider (8%): 4.5 units

What is the official advice on alcohol consumption?

England's Department of Health advises that men who regularly consume more than three to four units of alcohol a day "run an increasingly significant risk of illness and death", including from cancer and strokes.

The equivalent threshold for women is two to three units.

The department also advises that heavy drinking sessions carry increased health risks, and should be followed by 48 alcohol-free hours. In Scotland, the official advice is that people should have at least two alcohol-free days every week.

(...omissis...)

copia integrale del testo si può trovare al seguente link:

http://www.bbc.com/news/health-30500372

(Articolo pubblicato dal CUFRAD sul sito www.alcolnews.it)