A glass of wine at a restaurant may be 50 percent more potent than you think, experts warn
WebMD News from HealthDay
By Brenda Goodman
HealthDay Reporter
TUESDAY, Oct. 15 (HealthDay News) -- Thanks to rising alcohol levels in wine and beer, the drinks served in bars and restaurants are often more potent than people realize, a new report shows.
As a result, even conscientious drinkers who stick to a strict one- or two-drink limit could easily find themselves beyond the legal limit for driving or accidentally consuming more alcohol than they want to for good health.
The National Alcohol Beverage Control Association released the new report online Tuesday.
The USDA's Dietary Guidelines for Americans say people who drink should do so in moderation, which means one drink a day for women and up to two drinks a day for men.
The guidelines define a "drink" as 12 ounces of regular beer with 5 percent alcohol, 5 ounces of wine with 12 percent alcohol and 1.5 ounces of 80-proof spirits, which are 40 percent alcohol by volume.
Those reference sizes should shrink as the alcohol content of drinks goes up, but that often doesn't happen, said report author William Kerr, a senior scientist with the California-based Alcohol Research Group, a program of the Public Health Institute.
"A lot of the wines now are 14 percent or even 15 percent commonly, and the standard 5-ounce glass of wine doesn't apply to that level," Kerr said. "Really a 4-ounce glass is more appropriate."
"And we've learned from our studies of bars and restaurants that the average glass is a little bit over 6 ounces," he said.
As a result, one glass of wine may actually contain about 50 percent more alcohol than a person had bargained for.
Beer drinkers may find themselves in the same boat. A 12-ounce bottle of Bud Light beer has 4.2 percent alcohol, but the same-size bottle of Bud Light Platinum has 6 percent alcohol by volume, a nearly 50 percent increase.
"If people are thinking, 'I can have two beers a day and that's a healthy amount,' that's different if the amount is 9 percent versus 5 percent alcohol," said Dr. Gerard Moeller, director of addiction medicine at the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine, in Richmond.
It also matters whether you're drinking a standard 12-ounce bottle, or downing draft beer in pints, which are 16 ounces each.
Flavored malt beverages and newer flavored beers are muddying the waters even further, the report showed. These drinks, which include brands such as Bacardi Silver, Smirnoff Ice, Mike's Hard Lemonade and Four Loko, range from 5 percent to 12 percent alcohol.
Some of the more controversial varieties, like Colt 45's fruit-flavored Blast, which is 12 percent alcohol, are not only more potent, but also packaged in 23.5-ounce cans, making one container the equivalent of an entire bottle of a similarly strong wine.
source : How Much Alcohol In Your Drink? Stronger Beverages Make It Tough to Tell
