The fact that wine and beer bottles are exempt from those Nutrition Facts labels is utter nonsense.
If people knew how much sugar and calories are in their drink maybe they would think twice
I was drinking a while claw with my mother-in-law, and reflected that 100 calories was pretty good.
She responded she preferred her normal vodka sodas because they have 0 calories…
Honestly I wouldn’t know if I didn’t have to take nutrition 101 in college.
Actually who am I kidding if I didn’t know I probably would’ve googled it.
Zero calories? 100 g of 60 % vodka is 370 calories
90 cal a shot is my usual quick math. Clearly not my mother in law’s.
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There are a lot less calories in a litre of vodka than the alcohol content equivalent of beer. Hard liquor is much lower calorie than beer, but you’re not meant to sit around and drink a litre of fucking vodka dude. That’s definitely not on “the sources” lol
There are nutrition labels on alcohol in Europe, but people there drink as much as here.
Europe drinks way more alcohol than North America
Excerpt from the article:
If you feel that Europeans drink a lot, your hunch is correct: people across the continent consume more alcohol than in any other part of the world. Each year in Europe, every person aged 15 and over consumes, on average, 9.5 litres of pure alcohol, which is equivalent to around 190 litres of beer, 80 litres of wine or 24 litres of spirits. That’s according to the 2021 European health report by the World Health Organization (WHO).
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In beer form, it’s a bout a pint per day. Not too bad actually. I probably average close to that, since I’ll have a can of beer most nights, and a few pints and/or cocktails on weekends.
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It’s so relative. That sounds terrible to me. I however might drink 5 drinks a year.
wouldn’t that come out as 2 bottles per month?
750ml is the typical size of a bottle, so it would be more like 32 bottles per year, or 2.67 bottles per month.
True, one of my neighbour drank 1 bottle of wine at diner and 1 at supper, he died of cirrhosis of liver at around 60 though.
Yup, just checked my beer. Lists ingredients and calories. In 2 langauges!
The cans of beer that I buy have ingredients and nutrition info like a soda can does.
Haven’t seen any on liquor bottles though.
I don’t have any liquor bottles, but my wine bottles have ingredients info, but no nutrition info.
Depends on from where they were sourced.
My Itallian red wine has nutritional info, French sourced white wine has nutritional info, American sourced red wine has nothing.
A short search states that the US doesnt have to have labels on alcohol because it’s not regulated by the FDA.
In Canada beer alcohol isn’t required to have nutritional info.
The fact that wine and beer bottles are exempt from those Nutrition Facts labels is utter nonsense.
I did not know that. That is nuts.
Not having to list ingredients is a real pain if you have uncommon food allergies.
Alcohol is required to list ingredients and allergy information.
But then when you do see the nutrition label, it ends up acting as an ad that it’s a healthier drink.
No one is going to stop drinking because the drinks have too much sugar or calories
Maybe. But I know some who would be drinking less
Not to mention some people also want to take serious track of their caloric and nutritional intake but also want to enjoy an alcoholic beverage.
This I fully agree with, and have no idea why they are currently exempted but assume lobbying.
Meanwhile cannabis beverages are required to have:
-Nutrition facts including calories, sugar, etc.
-Gigantic yellow warning with random health warning (e.g., don’t use if pregnant)
-Huge red stop sign cannabis leaf logo
-KEEP OUT OF REACH OF CHILDREN
-Big pain in the ass plastic childproof thing
None of these required on a can of beer.
From a harm reduction perspective, it’s a massive failure. Many cannabis beverages have very low nearly zero calories, sugar-free. For your physical health they are almost certainly less harmful than alcohol and I know many people would enjoy them as an alternative to alcohol.
We have faced a similar failure in harm reduction strategy regarding vaping versus tobacco. I think in both cases it’s a result of vested interests (tax revenue, lobbying, don’t know) trumping what is best for people.
The way Canada has handled cannabis legalization is embarrassing.
We’re still ahead of the people who haven’t legalised it or even criminalise it, though.
That’s not something to be proud of. Just because someone does it worse doesn’t mean you should be proud of how it’s done.
Yeah, I’m not saying we should rest on our laurels.
To who? Because we’re still the only country with it fully legalized for recreational use. I fail to see how that’s embarrassing at all.
We used to have weird rules on alcohol too, and just like those, cannabis rules have been getting better as time has gone on. You can’t expect a world first system to be perfect right out of the gate.
It seems good to me. If people want it they can get it now.
That was always true though. The difference now is consistency
Yeah federally across the whole country? Sounds terrible.
If you simplify anything that much it seems like a great idea. You obviously don’t know much about the Cannabis Act.
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Oooooobviously
This is what happens when you have a large segment of the population that is both opposed to something, and not terribly against acting in bad faith. You get poison pills in your regulations.
What do you mean? I’m not familiar
Taxes are too high, rules for storage actively ruin the products. It really didn’t do much to stop illicit sales; most people I know that didn’t start smoking when it became illegal never buy from the dispensary. They did a terrible job of handing out liscensing, and most of the people who got them were just rich people making an investment(and lots of them had previously supported prohibition because they are also involved in alcohol sales) instead of working with non violent offenders to help them transition. And the edibles and drinkables people are talking about are so bad because the government made arbitrary THC limits.
Presumably he means that Canada didn’t handle it, aside from lifting the prohibition, as it is a provincial matter.
Health Canada has also made some ridiculous limitations. They are the reason all the warning labels have to be on everything, and why packaging is so bad that it ruins the buds. They also established some very restrictive rules regarding edibles and extracts. A 10mg limit for edibles is crazy and one of the big reasons that black market edibles are so popular.
To me the worst part is allowing at parks, so now myself or young kids have to experience the stench of some asshat not caring about fellow citizens and they recreation time.
Cannabis, unlike alcohol and tobacco, has a high chance of causing long term and devastating effects on youth. This is a fact proven by science. Ease of access to alcohol should be heavily reduced and warnings should be places on them, Conservative ran alcohol lobbies always block that idea.
Vaping has been scientifically proven to be just as bad, if not worse for you health not to mention the negative environmental factor. It should follow the same path as tobaccos; no branding, no labels, health warning, removal of flavors, fines for vaping in public spaces.
high chance of causing long term and devastating effects on youth.
There is a substantial body of evidence proving alcohol is extremely bad for brain development
I’m only aware of studies of the parents drinking while pregnant. Either way, I’m already in favour of higher control on alcohol.
Surprised to hear someone so confidently asserting that more prohibition is necessary. None of what you suggested really aligns with harm reduction and I would argue that more restrictions on vaping and on alcohol would backfire in terms of black market availability and less regulatory oversight.
I’m unaware of the proof that vaping is as bad or worse than tobacco. My understanding is that the consensus is vaping, while harmful, is significantly less harmful than smoking tobacco. https://www.kcl.ac.uk/news/vaping-substantially-less-harmful-than-smoking-largest-review-of-its-kind-finds
And for the record, typically how it works when you want to make a claim about proof and evidence is that you cite your sources. You can’t simply use hyperbolic language, wave your hands and say the magic word “science” and expect people to just believe you.
I never said anything about prohibition but stricter regulation.
I would like a ban on advertising, too.
I’d like a ban on all forms of advertising.
Marketing is nothing more than getting people to buy stuff they do not need.
It is the reason we live in a consumer culture, and is the force behind some of the biggest problems humanity faces today.
Hell yes!
The world would look so SO much better with advertising gone.
Now we have to deal with 5x50 meters (sigh, 15 by 150 foot) video screens that illuminate the night sky and blind you while you are driving, but hey, BUY NIKE!
This is not even mentioning brands buying up buildings and clubs and hospitals and what-not so that they can plaster their name over it. It sucks.
Brand recognition has been a bane of our existence for the past century
I might be up for a very VERY strictly limited form of advertising, limited to only a few spaces and times, but I’d love it that brands only show up when I ask them to. I need to buy a car? If I search “I want to buy a car” or something like that, then you can show me brands. Hell, even there, screw the shitty commercials, just show me the brand names and that’s it.
Ha! It’s not just that!
Where I live, they’ve got some sort of weird “The Future Is Electric” campaign going on. It’s on the busses, there’s a billboard of one near my place, and hell, that one’s powered so it shines brighter than the street lights at night!
And what is it advertising? I have no idea. Just that our province paid for it. The province. For at least one powered, custom billboard along with who knows how many regular ads. For something that I can’t even start figuring out.
Ads aren’t just ugly and a cheap way to make people spend money on things that they don’t need or even make their lives worse, but our tax dollars are spend on meaningless ads when there’s so many social and economic issues that are being actively ignored or even caused by the current governments.
I think alcohol advertising will eventually be banned but it’ll take a long time. Governments are addicted to the revenues.
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https://crtc.gc.ca/eng/television/publicit/codesalco.htm
No advertising to children is the most important restriction and several guidelines address this issue
Poster asked america, you provided canadian stats. Just fyi’s
User is I would assume German, asking on a Canadian instance, and on post about a Canadian news. I’d say that’s pretty reasonable. Canadian is part of America, as well as the USA.
You are right. I misread America as “North America”, but America means USA. In the USA, they have freedom of speech, more so than Canada, the government can’t restrict advertising that much. Their industry is mostly self-regulating, for example: https://www.beerinstitute.org/policy-responsibility/responsibility/advertising-marketing-code/
When the cigarette companies decided they were losing money by advertising on TV they got it banned.
America means USA
It also refers to the combined area of North and South America. This the more likely usage here, as who would ask about whether or not the USA has such regulation in a Canadian forum? That would have no relevance.
North, South, and Central America! 😉
You must be right since I originally included Canada in “America”.
Canada is within America. America is exceedingly broad, with so many different jurisdictions, all with their own rules. There is no single answer as to what the rules are across all of America. Since this is a Canadian forum, Canada was a reasonable choice to narrow down to.
There is still room for you to dive into some of those other jurisdictions, if you find it pertinent, but I expect nobody here actually cares about what is going on in, say, Mexico.
Canada is within the continent of North America.
The concept of ‘America’ these days does not apply to continental plates, and you know that as well as i do.
You know what I meant, and you are arguing disingenuously. We can all see it.
Canada is within the continent of North America.
And North America is located within America.
The concept of ‘America’ these days does not apply to continental plates
The thing is, we keep a record of how words are commonly used, and that record tells that it absolutely does refer to a set of continents. But, I know, let’s not let facts and figures get in the way of random internet nonsense.
You know what I meant
Yes, I know you meant it in jest. Nobody would actually take time out of their day to write such a comment earnestly. We can all see that.
🙄
Because it would be weird reading that smoking alcohol is dangerous for pregnant women.
This damn nanny state is out of control! /s
Lobbying
I mean, aren’t the cigarette companies famous for being extreme lobbyists?
They did, if you look at late 20th century history. The lobbying and propaganda they did at the time was insane, but there was only so much they could do when people were dying from lung cancer, had trouble breathing, and even chewing tobacco was known to cause mouth cancer.
They simply gave up trying so hard in the west and concentrated efforts in emerging markets. Do you remember the infamous video of the smoking baby a few years ago? Shit like that’s eerily common in places like Indonesia.
They moved to vape stuff.
And sugar. Off topic a bit, but my addiction is sugar and some reminders might make the occasional difference.
One of the most overlooked influences on overall health and nutrition. Many people are not fully aware of their full intake. A lot of processed foods are 10% or more sugar by weight including breads, yogurts, and cereals. A few grams in everything you eat can really add up to a lot over the day.
A more noticeable warning label of this food is x% of recomended sugar intake could help, but good luck forcing a corporation to do anything that could reduce sales.
On US labels it has the percentage of daily intake for added sugars not all sugars. So there is some info on nutrition labels but everyone’s ‘daily’ intake is different and is usually more than on the label.
I switched from coca cola to tea sweetened with a little honey, and one day I just dropped the honey. Without the coke, I think I’ve cut about 80% of my sugar intake. Now I drink loads of tea every day and even when we go to a fast food I will skip sugar beverages.
Just cover every edible product with pictures from medizzy. Problem solved.
They did that with smoking, I see zero results. I see people looking at those scary pictures and go “huh…” and then light a cigarette to get rid of the anxiety that that image gave them.
That shit exists to make non-smokers feel good. It generally takes a viewpoint change to quit.
Before I quit I would just put painters tape over the picture so I didn’t have to look at it. I didn’t want to carry around pictures of diseased body parts all day.
Exception to this being the one with the droopy cigarette for ED. It was funny.
Anyway I don’t think those warnings influenced my quitting at all, because I avoided looking at them.
Because alchol sellers aren’t widely considered as flat out evil as cigarette makers, meaning that they can still realistically grease the wheels of power with dump trucks full of money.
I’m sure cigarette makers would love to the do the same thing, but no politician is dumb enough to risk taking “campaign contributions” from people who are widely considered to be the scum of the earth. Alcohol makers still have a level of respectability that lets them get away with it.
no politician is dumb enough to risk taking “campaign contributions” from people who are widely considered to be the scum of the earth.
And yet they’ll accept campaign assistance from foreign and domestic oil companies:
I can think of local brewers and stuff that do it as a hobby, and just happened to take a chance to start doing it professionally. I don’t think these people are evil at all, they’re just trying to have fun with their interest (albeit one that isn’t great for your health) and make some money while doing so.
Can’t really say the same thing for tobacco. I’m sure in some places there may be a similar kind thing though, so that’s just a thought from my local perspective. All I know are big corporate brands for smoking.
Edit: just to add onto this… I absolutely think we should include ingredients, nutritional facts, and warnings on alcohol still. Just my 2 cents about one being more evil than the other by a landslide.
Very true. I was just comparing corporations to corporations. Craft breweries are certainly not evil; they’re the equivalent of local businesses for the most part.
IMO charging $16 a glass for another IPA with the same 3 hops that are in every IPA is pretty evil.
Economists: The high price is meant to scare you away.
Lemmy users: $16 and the same as every other IPA? Pour me another!
Bro it’s artisanal
Who do you think lobbied for banning flavored cigarettes and more control of vapes in the US?
Not really equivalent. Smoking permanently leaves all kind of nasty shit in your lungs and causes cancer. Also very addictive, making moderation physically difficult (alcohol can also be addictive but not to the same extremes). Alcohol in moderation isn’t really an issue. Pushing it more can give your liver a bad time, but as long as you give it a break before the point of disease it can bounce right back.
There is a societal problem especially in the UK in that it’s seen as a sort of matter of pride to throw moderation out of the window and get as wasted as possible, but I have my doubts that graphic health warnings will do much about that. Either way it’s more an effect of society ignoring and sometimes even shaming moderation (how many times have you been shamed for going home before you fall over on a work’s night out) than the alcohol itself.
“Alcohol might be safe in moderation, but we don’t have the research to know for sure.”
Not exactly the most interesting of articles.
In my books Strange Planet has it right with labeling it “Mild Poison”. Kind of changed the relationship for me the odd time I do drink socially.
less than 1.5 litres of wine or less than 3.5 litres of beer or less than 450 millilitres of spirits per week.
The WHO considers that light? Holy crap… so if you’re drinking 2 bottles of wine yourself per week you’re a “light drinker”
The amount I drink per week, would probably not even be called drinking in Europe.
Hmmm
Still, as even they say, the less the safer. I’d say go after the low hanging fruit of binge drinkers (of which there are many).long before going after those of us who drink moderately.
I absolutely agree, and I didn’t mean to undermine your point in any way. I just wished to inform those that might not have been aware.
Drinking less = less dangerous
I also believe that “rewards” in moderation can be more healthy than avoiding everything that is unhealthy
Yeah good input though. I’m surprised WHO sees it as worse than smoking. Not something I think I could ever find myself agreeing with, but honestly it seems every form of evidence/study these days has another one saying different so I don’t much believe in objective truth any more. Just going to enjoy life, as long as it lasts. Smoke literally feels nasty to me in a way that drinking (within reason) doesn’t.
WHO? Really?
Smoking does not permanently leave anything in your lungs. The lungs constantly self clean and I believe after 10 years, all damage from any amount of smoking is removed.
The scarring from all the heavy coughing etc?
Still, rather not have all that sitting there for 10 years. The liver recovers from a few pints a lot quicker I believe, and even in the less favourable case of a fatty liver, a matter of weeks of abstienence rather than years. Disease of either, is probably a more dangerous situation.
Or to the leading cause of death of Canadians: dietary cholesterol
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bY0UY3FwoW4
The leading cause of death of Canadians can be eliminated strictly through diet and avoiding animal products that contain cholesterol. And yet we pour millions of dollars into research each year for cutting edge new drugs that give you (so claimed) a 20% reduction in heart attacks, while having dozens of unwanted side effects.
If you’re relying on the government and industry to teach you how to be healthy and to provide the tools you need to do it, you’re going to die young.
Dietary cholesterol isn’t well correlated with serum cholesterol, which is what the paper you’ve linked is about. It even veers off into the natural conclusion if you believe that serum cholesterol is the only thing that matters: statin prescriptions for everyone!
For most people the level of cholesterol in food has little effect on blood cholesterol.
Fat, on the other hand…
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For most people the level of cholesterol in food has little effect on blood cholesterol.
I should have said dietary animal fats (including cholesterol) leading to serum cholesterol instead of dietary cholesterol and I didn’t catch the point you were making right away
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Alcohol is a literal fucking toxin
Almost. It’s that first breakdown step of ethanol into acetaldehyde that is the worst, but the human body is remarkably resilient to it.
Humans have a very interesting relationship to alcohol, for sure. It was very useful for preserving primitive beer for long periods which helped us survive and evolve. Hell, it is even theorized that we started to develop the ability to process the stuff so we wouldn’t get blasted out of our minds when we left the trees to forage for fruits that may have already been fermented.
But, yes, it could be considered a toxin that has no purpose these days. Truth be told, it is still useful for it’s medicinal effects when combined with other medications for cold and flu relief. In highly stressful situations it can be beneficial for a quick morale boost. There are plenty of other uses for it as well.
In full disclosure, I don’t drink anymore. My body has always metabolized it too well and led me to drink a lot, quickly. Hangovers were always short if I even had a serious one at all. This excessive drinking led to an addiction which took me years to overcome. But enough about me…
My point is not to underestimate its benefits, s’all. Moderation is key and for those who cannot moderate, abstain.
It was very useful for preserving primitive beer
The alcohol content in primitive beer was far too low to act as a preservative. The only reason it was useful back then is because it didn’t cause dysentery - which was purely because it was boiled and had nothing to do with the alcohol
medicinal effects when combined with other medications for cold and flu relief.
Alcohol is an immunosuppressant
Good correction, thanks. I must have been thinking of hops that was added later to preserve the beer. Boiling is a much simpler answer.
Alcohol is an immunosuppressant, yes. To clarify my point, It’s proper function is as a solvent in, say, cough syrup, to ensure correct mixture. It can change the rate at which medicines are broken down by the body to some degree while also acting as an extremely mild sedative as well.
Wow, very interesting and informative!
Also want to say congrats on the sobriety. I know all to well of what that kind of withdrawal is like (2 years bzd clean as of yesterday!)
I wholly agree with the author of this article, but implementing something like this will meet a lot of resistance. Let’s not forget that cigarettes are a relatively new phenomenon, whereas alcohol is something we’ve consumed as a species since prehistoric times. There are a lot of cultural, social, and historical ties to the use of alcohol that people won’t let go easily and will make any attempt to reduce alcohol consumption an uphill battle.
No one recreationally smokes the same way that people might drink every once in a while.
You also have a lot of money spent by various alcohol manufacturers to keep alcohol from being treated like tobacco. If anything, drinking went up a lot with millennials.
I know quite a few people who only smoke on the rare occasions they have a drink.
I was not one of them.
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I always thought the hypocrisy between alcohol and cannabis packaging is ridiculous. If cigarettes and cannabis need to be heavily restricted in terms of having simple, plain packaging with health warnings, anything for sale that can cause health issues should be subject to the same restrictions.
Everything will eventually cause health issues. Some substances are quicker to the punch than others, though. To avoid label fatigue, there is merit in limiting use to the worst offenders.
It has only been in the last few years that we are starting recognizing a greater danger in alcohol than earlier realized. And, indeed, Health Canada labelling requirements for alcohol have become more stringent in that time. As we learn more, it is likely the labelling requirements will continue to evolve as well.
“I don’t want to say that there are necessarily equivalent health risks,”
I mean, they said it themselves. Drinking responsibly and in moderation poses no recorded long-term health risks. But even 1 cigarette a day can cause serious harm.
Not quite. Even the accepted amount poses increased threats to being diagnosed with cancer (it is a carcinogen at the end of the day): https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/alcohols-effects-health/alcohols-effects-body
It is incredibly worse with breast cancer too.
“Evidence is consistent that intake, even intake of less than 10-15 grams per day, is associated with increased risk of this disease”
https://arcr.niaaa.nih.gov/volume/40/2/alcohols-effects-breast-cancer-women
The published “safe” levels of alcohol are generally completely arbitrary:
That study is a major failure in one key respect: Europeans drink far more than North Americans on average … and have longer lifespans than North Americans on average.
Perhaps there is something coughobesitycough that might be better to address first instead of going full metal Karen on people who enjoy a tipple at the pub at the end of a day?
And we Europeans would have an even longer lifespan if we didn’t drink literal poison.
I get it, it is fun. I partake in it every so often.
But don’t claim alcohol isn’t harmful. It is one of the most harmful drugs to your body and to society. Even worse than heroin. According to a UK study.
Don’t forget that 60% of aggression where the police needs to intervene has to do with alcohol.
Aggressive drunkenness is cultural.
Drunks here get loud and maudlin, but not aggressive; nowhere near the extent of, say, British drunkards or Canadian ones, or American ones. Same in Japan, incidentally, and Korea.
Alcohol reduces your inhibitions. What’s being inhibited is purely on the person being exposed and the culture they’re from.
It looks harmless, since you need to drink in order to stay alive.
But alcohol is nothing more than just poison. Which is why it gives our body the sensation of being poisoned.
And it works in contrary, since it actively dehydrates the body.
