WEDNESDAY, June 18 (HealthDay News) -- If you sidle up to a bar
and assume one drink an hour won't make you legally drunk, think
again. A new study finds that bartenders pack a lot more booze into
common drinks than many people realize.
Researchers visited 80 bars and restaurants in Northern
California last year and found that glasses of wine and spirits are
often 50 percent larger than the "standard" size used in
guidelines. That means people who follow recommendations about
avoiding more than one drink an hour may be getting more booze than
they bargained for, the study found.
"These things can creep up on someone without their being
aware," said study lead author William Kerr, a senior scientist at
the Public Health Institute's Alcohol Research Group. "There should
be caution."
Kerr and his colleagues launched their study as part of ongoing
research into alcohol consumption. "It occurred to me that we
didn't know much about what people meant when they said they had a
drink," he said.
The researchers visited 80 randomly selected drinking
establishments in Northern California, including some in the major
cities of San Francisco, Oakland and Sacramento. Some were bars,
while others were restaurants.
The researchers typically visited in groups of three to four and
bought a round of drinks. Then one member of the group would use a
cylinder to measure the drinks. Sometimes the researchers would
duck into the restroom so they wouldn't be noticed. Bartenders
occasionally noticed what the researchers were doing and spoke up,
but they never made a major fuss, Kerr said.
An analysis of 480 drinks found that wine, beer and mixed drinks
were often 50 percent larger than a "standard" drink. The average
glasses of wine and mixed drinks were 42 percent to 43 percent
larger, and the average draft beer was 22 percent larger. (Bottled
beers weren't measured.)
Glasses of wine, meanwhile, typically packed more alcohol per
volume -- 14 percent instead of 12 percent -- than those used to
define a standard drink.
Factors like the type of establishment, the region of Northern
California and the gender of the bartender didn't seem to affect
the sizes of the drinks, Kerr said.
The findings were expected to be published in the September
issue of
Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research and are
available online.
Some people use the definition of a standard drink to figure out
how much they can drink before becoming drunk.
"If the chart says you can have five standard drinks (before you
get drunk), you can only have three to four of these actual
drinks," Kerr said.
Dwight Heath, a professor of anthropology at Brown University
who studies alcohol consumption, said the study "points out a dirty
little secret of alcohol research: The definition of 'standard
drink' is inaccurate and out-of-date."
Researchers have failed to recognize and adjust to "changes in
culture," Heath said.
More information
Learn more about alcohol and potential health risks at
Pace University.
