Smaller wine bottles could cut alcohol consumption, says journal

Reducing the size of standard wine bottles could help cut alcohol consumption and related health problems, a leading medical journal says today.

Piling further pressure on the alcohol industry and retailers, the British Medical Journal urges them to discourage consumers from drinking “supersize” glasses of wine amid moves to ban large meal portions as part of the drive to slash obesity rates in the UK.

Dr Trish Groves, the journal’s deputy editor, said: “I like a glass of good wine with my supper. But, once two of us have had a glass each, it’s all too tempting to finish the bottle there and then. Coupled with the news that wine is getting stronger, it’s no wonder Britain’s middle-aged middle classes are getting wasted. Why does wine have to come in 75cl bottles?”

A recent report from Liverpool John Moores University showed that wealthy towns top the league table for hazardous drinking in the UK. The British Medical Association’s recent report Alcohol Misuse: Tackling the UK Epidemic also confirms that men and women who are higher earners are more likely than the lower paid to have drunk alcohol at all, and to have drunk on five or more days a week.

While beer remains Britain’s favourite drink, wine consumption rose from 10% of all alcohol in 1970 to 28.8 % in 2005. Groves asks whether a wider range of good quality and reasonably priced wine in smaller bottles would reduce consumption, identifying “a peculiarly British problem”, as restaurants and cafes in France offer wines by the carafe, pichet (small jug) and half-bottle, and mini-markets have a good range at 37.5cl at fair prices.

Read the entire article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2008/feb/29/health.healthandwellbeing