Alcohol consumption survey:

[Gifted Gourmet]

The article from The Economist

Your thoughts on this survey? Valid with your current beliefs? Off target?

Increases/decreases in drinking trends make sense with these figures?

[tommy]

in the US it's 6 liters a year? i'd guess i hit that number on about January 10th or so.

edit: ah, "pure alcohol." so if wine is 13% or so, i guess i hit the 6 liter mark by mid-march.

Edited July 1, 2004 by tommy (log)

[Gifted Gourmet]

in the US it's 6 liters a year? i'd guess i hit that number on about January 10th or so.

Statistic smasher!!

[Brad Ballinger]

It would be interesting to see this list over a period of history. How much to countries move up or move down? Who is consistently at the top or bottom. A solitary data point like this doesn't reveal much.

I believe in 1992 the top four were Germany, Denmark, Poland, and Ireland. If that's the case, I wonder why Poland has dropped so dramatically.

[JAZ]

I'm not sure this survey tells us much at all. Some societies (like the US) have a split personality when it comes to alcohol consumption -- lots of complete abstainers and lots of "abusers"; while others (like France) have a more moderate consumption practiced by more people (in other words, not as many abstemious citizens, but not as many abusers either).

It'd also be more interesting to know in what form the various countries tend to imbibe their alcohol -- beer, wine or distilled spirits.

By the way, I'm sure that I, personally, up the average in the US.

[Boris_A]

Luxembourg (440'000 inhabitants) is a banking/financial center of Europe. A lot of the European union administration is located there too. They must have happy lunchtimes there.

Edited July 1, 2004 by Boris_A (log)

[fiftydollars]

I'm dissappointed with Mexico's showing. I know we can do better.

[Boris_A]

To compare these numbers with consumption of wine, beer and spirits could be telling about drinking habits.

For instance, the French consume 70-80 l wine (=7.5-8.5 l pure alcohol). Not much left for beer and spirits.