Raise a Glass of Beer To Cultural Drinking Differences

The weekend is here, timeout for a beer.  It’s the American way, especially in Yakima where the hops are grown to flavor the beer!  But as you pop or top or crack the cap, keep in mind different countries and different cultures have widely varying recommendations about how much alcohol is actually safe to drink.

Stanford University researchers analyzed the safe drinking guidelines from 37 countries, looking at what each country defined as a "standard drink," as well as how many drinks it took to reach the recommended daily or weekly limit. Sounds like a pretty good summer job to me, except for all that travel!

For perspective consider the USA daily standard -- 14 grams of alcohol, which is about the amount found in a 12-ounce beer or a 5-ounce glass of wine.  With that in mind, as the scientists ranged about, they discovered quite a range -- the amount of alcohol in a standard drink varied by 250 percent among the countries, from a low of 8 grams of alcohol in Iceland, to a high of 20 grams of alcohol in Austria.

The countries also had very different recommendations for the limits of daily and weekly drinking.  Twenty grams a week in Croatia, India, Singapore and Sweden was thought best for men, while the U.S. recommended weekly alcohol limit is 196 (14 standard drinks) for men. But in Poland they pound them down at a rate of  280 grams -- or 20 drinks per week.  (Fox)