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A Drink Is A Drink ... Or Is It?

Surveys have found that most people have little idea of the amount of wine, beer, spirits, or alcohol content in a given glass. Preliminary pilot studies confirmed that asking subjects the size of their wine or spirit drinks was unreliable.

In a recent study, a sample of 310 drinkers from the 2000 National Alcohol Survey were re-contacted to participate in a telephone survey with specific questions about the drinks they consumed. Subjects were instructed to prepare their usual drink at home and to measure the alcoholic beverage and other ingredients with a provided beaker. Information on the brand or type of each beverage was used to specify the percentage of alcohol.

The weighted mean alcohol content of respondent’s drinks was found to be 0.67 ounces overall. The largest average alcohol content for spirits was found to be 0.89 ounces – 48.3% larger than a so-called standard drink. Wine drinks had the second highest mean alcohol content at 0.66 ounces, 10% larger than a standard drink. Beer drinks were found to contain the least alcohol with a mean of 0.56 ounces, 6.7% less alcohol than the standard.

While the 0.6-ounce of alcohol drink standard appears to be a reasonable single standard, it cannot capture the substantial variations evident in this sample and it probably underestimates average wine and spirits ethanol content. The study concludes that, although drinks of a certain type could contain this weighted mean amount of alcohol, it is not necessarily an accurate description of the drinks actually consumed by Americans.

(Kerr, WC, Greenfield, TK, Tujaque, J, Brown, SE: A drink is a drink? Variation in the amount of alcohol contained in beer, wine and spirits drinks in a US methodological sample. Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research 29: 2015-2021, 2005.)

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