French skipper Charlie Dalin celebrates aboard his monohull “Macif 2015” after finishing third in the … (+)
There is a global trend to encourage people to drink less alcohol. WHO is behind this decision, and the question is not who the World Health Organization is.
Only a few years ago, a WHO study chart ranked overall alcohol consumption in France 18th out of 191 countries, behind most Eastern European and Scandinavian countries. In contrast, the United States ranks 48 in overall alcohol consumption, behind much of Europe, many parts of Africa and even Canada and Chile.
At the bottom of the WHO table is another list of annual per capita alcohol consumption in 34 countries: with just under 9 liters per year, the United States is in 23rd place, and its consumption of alcohol per capita is ahead of Canada and Chile by around 1 liter. each. With just under 12 liters per inhabitant, and in third position, France is only beaten by Austria and Estonia by a fraction of a liter each.
According to the WHO, more than 3 million people worldwide died from alcohol-related causes in 2016 and “…harmful alcohol use causes more than 5% of the global disease burden” .
In 2010, a consensus of WHO members adopted WHA63, a global strategy to reduce alcohol consumption. The strategy is structured around “…ten key policy options and interventions at the national level and four priority areas for global action”. One of the areas promoted by the WHO is lowering blood alcohol limits drivers at 0.04%, half of what the standard of 0.08% had become worldwide. The idea took root in Europe and America, but also elsewhere; for now, the decline is limited to 0.05%, but this slope is certainly slippery.
While the WHO movement to reduce alcohol consumption globally focuses on alcohol generically, I focus on wine.
It is not an exaggeration to believe that the rise in wine prices has at least something to do with the WHO strategy – the proof is that another of the objectives linked to the strategy is to put pressure on countries to increase the price of alcohol for consumers. It’s also not a stretch to believe that the recommended daily number of glasses of wine in the United States has been influenced by the global consensus. In the United States, the daily wine recommendation for women and men was two and three 4-ounce glasses, respectively; it was lowered to one and two respectively. (Incidentally, three glasses of wine equal half a bottle.)
French authorities announced a few weeks ago their intention to take nationwide measures to reduce alcohol consumption. The claim is that more than 25% of French adults overdo it. Specific to wine, OFDT, a French organization that monitors addictions states that “…despite a significant drop in the volume of wine consumed over the last 50 years, it (France) remains the world’s largest consumer…” The OFDT states that French wine consumption represents 58% of the total volume of global consumption. alcoholic beverages consumed per capita by French people over 15 years old.
Two glasses of wine per day are recommended for French women and three for French men. The new initiative appears to reduce the recommendation to a general dose of ten drinks per week spread over seven days. We are far from the first major effort to reduce French alcohol consumption in the 1950s; so, the recommendation was not to exceed one liter per meal!
Remember resveratrol? According to Livestrong, a company that promotes a healthy lifestyle, you would need to drink almost 40 liters of red wine per day to benefit from the benefits of resveratrol. Maybe a long time ago Sixty Minutes article on red wine Morley Safer was right that it protects against heart disease, but certainly some people understood that nothing was said about potential liver damage.
The French national alcohol reduction campaign offers wine consumers in all countries a quick and easy online way to learn about the risks associated with our alcohol consumption. According to alcoholometer, I join overall 37% of men my age in exceeding the new French directives. 22% of men my age drink more than two glasses of wine per day and 23% exceed 10 glasses per week. Don’t ask how we arrive at that 37% figure, because it’s not obvious from the news: is it possible that about 15% of men my age have a serious problem with alcohol, wine Or other ?
Last week my GP recommended a glass of wine with dinner. Does this suggest a new downward trend in the United States, even weaker than in France?
