Doctors attack ‘supersize’ drinks

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Title – Doctors attack ‘supersize’ drinks
Source – www.bbc.co.uk
Date – 12th April 2008

Pubs, bars and clubs are part of the service industry, they provide a service that customers want and they compete on the basis of the service they offer. In this way they are the same as many industries and those that don’t provide exactly what the customer wants, will fall by the wayside.

But it is an industry that has to accept that due to the nature of the product they sell, they also have a social responsibility. So are these two aspects incompatible?

20 years ago most pubs you went into had a bottle of red on the back bar and a bottle of white wine in the back of a fridge. Often this wine was dubious in quality and landlords up and down the country were wary of opening a bottle as selling the rest of it before it went off, was sometimes a challenge. But things change; sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse and just sometimes, a little of both. The way to deal with change is to embrace the positive and resolve the negative; we should learn from history, but not repeat the mistakes of history. The great thing about hindsight is we can pick and choose the bits that work and discard or change those that don’t.

So what have we learned in this case? Wine when it is of a good quality is a very popular drink and the vast majority of people enjoy it sensibly. We have learned that quality in wine is a key factor and we have learned that consumed sensibly it can be a very sociable drink; in fact one of the great qualities of wine is that a bottle can be shared between friends and family. From some reports you would think that people go to the bar and order a bottle each, that is simply not the case.

The fact that we started to enjoy wine in the UK stemmed from better quality imports, venues that were more female friendly and the sociable aspect of the drink. We learned from our European neighbours about quality and we learned from the emerging markets of Australia, South Africa and other ‘New World Wine’ countries that good wine no longer needed to be an elitist product and was available and affordable to all. With this came the introduction of the larger wine glass and most people would now find it odd to drink out of a tiny glass filled to the brim, does that make them all binge drinkers?

The simple answer is no, glass size is inevitably going to lead to people drinking slightly more, but it doesn’t make them binge drinkers. My wine glasses at home are almost big enough to contain a whole bottle of wine, yet even at home I probably never fill them with more than 150ml at any time, because that is simply the way most responsible people, who have even the slightest appreciation for wine, will drink it.

That there should be choice is not of the question, we live in a society based on freedoms and the freedom to choose is one of those fundamentals. There is an argument that selling only 250ml glasses of wine as ‘standard’ does not provide this choice and encourages excessive drinking, but by the same argument customers should be allowed to choose a 250ml glass if they want it and they should be allowed to by the bottle. There is a case for responsible retailers offering a variety of standard sizes. One of the problems of course is when (as most people do) you buy a bottle, does that mean when you share it out amongst your group you have to measure it out in units? We have to be sensible and actually address the problem; it really is not all in the size of the glass, but in the education of the people drinking.

The system of ‘units’ of alcohol used to be roughly convenient; 1 glass (125ml) of wine = 1 Unit. 1 Half Pint of Beer =1 Unit. 1 Shot (25ml) spirits = 1 Unit. But how many of these really apply any more with ‘beer’ varying from 3%abv. To 8% abv.; spirits ranging from 20% abv. to 45% abv.; it is hardly full proof. The best way to address these problems is to increase awareness, educate customers and staff alike and make people aware of safe and sensible drinking limits, not to punish the sensible majority for the offences of the minority. We all have a duty to address the problems in our society caused by alcohol, but we favour progress over prohibition.

We offer the portfolio of BIIAB courses to help retailers train their staff to a suitable standard to maximise the potential of their business at the same time as acting both within the law and promoting responsible alcohol retailing. This includes the Award in Responsible Alcohol Retailing (ARAR) and the National Certificate for Personal Licence Holders (NCPLH).

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