Alcohol and health

[Glenn E.]

the formula for calculating units of alcohol in a particular measure of drink: millilitres x ABV / 1000.

So a 750 ml bottle of Port is

750 x .20 / 1000

150 / 1000

.15 units? So 6 2/3 bottles of Port is one unit?

This seems entirely reasonable, even for Derek. I don't understand what you chaps are on about.

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2

[djewesbury]

the formula for calculating units of alcohol in a particular measure of drink: millilitres x ABV / 1000.

So a 750 ml bottle of Port is

750 x .20 / 1000

150 / 1000

.15 units? So 6 2/3 bottles of Port is one unit?

This seems entirely reasonable, even for Derek. I don't understand what you chaps are on about.

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2

Ah. Your decimal point in front of the ABV is a little optimistic!

[PhilW]

It's even easier since most bottles are marked in cl, rather than ml; just take the % as stated by ABV of the volume as stated in cl, and you get the number of units of alcohol (this all works simply because 10ml of alcohol is one unit).
Examples:
- a bottle of port is 75cl, ABV is 20%, 20% of 75 is 15 so there are 15 units of alcohol in the bottle.
- a bottle of beer is 33cl, ABV is 5%, 5% of 33cl is 1.65 so there are 1.65 units of alcohol in the bottle.
etc.

[DRT]

If you apply the arithmetic at the end of the evening the result is better:

- the bottle of Port contains 0cl at 20% ABV. 20% of 0cl = 0 units in a bottle of Port.

It's really just a timing issue.

[jdaw1]

The BBC has a personalised inflation calculator. Enter some details, and it reports some numbers, and maybe a cute fact.

[Glenn E.]

the formula for calculating units of alcohol in a particular measure of drink: millilitres x ABV / 1000.

So a 750 ml bottle of Port is

750 x .20 / 1000

150 / 1000

.15 units? So 6 2/3 bottles of Port is one unit?

This seems entirely reasonable, even for Derek. I don't understand what you chaps are on about.

Ah. Your decimal point in front of the ABV is a little optimistic!

Are you suggesting that the formula is inaccurate? Perhaps that it should have been stated as %ABV instead of ABV? Surely not. The government would never make such an egregious error.

[djewesbury]

I just tested my blood pressure. Amazingly, I am 'ideal'.

[jdaw1]

Supermarket giant Tesco has revealed it threw away almost 30,000 tonnes of food in the first six months of the year.

Using its own data and industry-wide figures, it has also estimated that, across the UK food industry, 68% of salad to be sold in bags was wasted - 35% of it thrown out by customers.

[Glenn E.]

I just tested my blood pressure. Amazingly, I am 'ideal'.

It has been many years since I have had this problem, but at one time a registered nurse tested my blood pressure (and then re-tested it, and then checked her equipment and re-tested it again) at 90/41. She then looked at me, and apparently seriously asked, "are you sure you're alive?"

Thankfully over the years my blood pressure has risen into the "ideal" range. It now typically measures around 110/70.

Since alcohol is known to raise blood pressure, I credit Port with improving my health.

[jdaw1]

The BBC reports that 'Shepherd's pies are twice the size they used to be'. This news seems to have been met with condemnation rather than enthusiasm.

[jdaw1]

The risk from saturated fat in foods such as butter, cakes and fatty meat is being overstated and demonised, according to a cardiologist.

Dr Aseem Malhotra said there was too much focus on the fat with other factors such as sugar often overlooked.

It is time to "bust the myth of the role of saturated fat in heart disease", he writes in an opinion piece in the British Medical Journal.

But the British Heart Foundation said there was conflicting evidence.

Scientists universally accept that trans fats found in many fast foods, bakery products, and margarines increase the risk of cardiovascular disease through inflammatory processes. But ‟saturated fat” is another story. The mantra that saturated fat must be removed to reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease has dominated dietary advice and guidelines for almost four decades.

Yet scientific evidence shows that this advice has, paradoxically, increased our cardiovascular risks. Furthermore, the government’s obsession with levels of total cholesterol, which has led to the overmedication of millions of people with statins, has diverted our attention from the more egregious risk factor of atherogenic dyslipidaemia.

Saturated fat has been demonised ever since Ancel Keys’s landmark ‟seven countries” study in 1970. This concluded that a correlation existed between the incidence of coronary heart disease and total cholesterol concentrations, which then correlated with the proportion of energy provided by saturated fat. But correlation is not causation. Nevertheless, we were advised to cut fat intake to 30% of total energy and saturated fat to 10%.” The aspect of dietary saturated fat that is believed to have the greatest influence on cardiovascular risk is elevated concentrations of low density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol. Yet the reduction in LDL cholesterol from reducing saturated fat intake seems to be specific to large, buoyant (type A) LDL particles, when in fact it is the small, dense (type B) particles (responsive to carbohydrate intake) that are implicated in cardiovascular disease.

Indeed, recent prospective cohort studies have not supported any significant association between saturated fat intake and cardiovascular risk. Instead, saturated fat has been found to be protective. The source of the saturated fat may be important. Dairy foods are exemplary providers of vitamins A and D. As well as a link between vitamin D deficiency and a significantly increased risk of cardiovascular mortality, calcium and phosphorus found commonly in dairy foods may have antihypertensive effects that may contribute to inverse associations with cardiovascular risk. One study showed that higher concentrations of plasma trans-palmitoleic acid, a fatty acid mainly found in dairy foods, was associated with higher concentrations of high density lipoprotein, lower concentrations of triglycerides and C reactive protein, reduced insulin resistance, and a lower incidence of diabetes in adults. Red meat is another major source of saturated fat. Consumption of processed meats, but not red meat, has been associated with coronary heart disease and diabetes mellitus, which may be explained by nitrates and sodium as preservatives.

!

The ‟calorie is not a calorie” theory has been further substantiated by a recent JAMA study showing that a ‟low fat” diet resulted in the greatest decrease in energy expenditure, an unhealthy lipid pattern, and increased insulin resistance in comparison with a low carbohydrate and low glycaemic index diet. In the past 30 years in the United States the proportion of energy from consumed fat has fallen from 40% to 30% (although absolute fat consumption has remained the same), yet obesity has rocketed.

One reason: when you take the fat out, the food tastes worse. The food industry compensated by replacing saturated fat with added sugar. The scientific evidence is mounting that sugar is a possible independent risk factor for the metabolic syndrome (the cluster of hypertension, dysglycaemia, raised triglycerides, low HDL cholesterol, and increased waist circumference).

[djewesbury]

After all those rather tricky words we end on the comfortingly prosaic "increased waist circumference".

[djewesbury]

Products ranging from Kit Kats to breadsticks to belVita will contain less fat, but sugar levels will stay the same.

Kit Kats and Oreos will become healthier, the government will say on Saturday, announcing that the companies which make them have signed up to a "responsibility pledge" to cut the saturated fat the products contain. But the sugar levels in them will stay the same.

Days after the British Medical Journal ran an opinion piece from a cardiologist asserting that sugar and not saturated fat was the leading cause in the rise in heart disease and diabetes, the government announced the latest in its series of public health pledges with food manufacturers and supermarkets. This will, ministers said, remove the equivalent of one and a half Olympic-sized swimming pools full of saturated fat from the national diet.

"One in six male deaths and one in nine female deaths are from coronary heart disease ”“ this is why it's critical that we challenge the way we eat and that we all make changes where we can," said the public health minister, Jane Ellison.

"It's hugely encouraging that companies providing almost half of the food available on the UK market have committed to this new responsibility deal pledge and they are leading the way to give their customers healthier products and lower fat alternatives."

Tesco said it will take 32 tonnes of fat out of its breadsticks and other products ”“ while Morrisons promised to reformulate its own-brand range of spreads to take out some of the saturated fats, amounting to another 50 tonnes. Sainsbury's says it will continue work it has begun in cutting down the saturated fat in its products.

Mondelez ”“ the snack arm of Kraft, the US multinational the owns Cadbury's ”“ will reformulate products including belVita, Oreo and Barny biscuits.

Nestle is the biggest loser ”“ with a pledge to take 3,800 tonnes of saturated fats out of its Kit Kats. Nestle says this is just a further step on the road to making its product more healthy. The firm stops short of suggesting Kit Kats might be classified one day as health foods, but adds that it had already lowered the salt content of the product.

"This is the next step on the journey where we are improving the nutritional profile of our products," said Ciaran Sullivan, managing director of Nestle Confectionery. "Kit Kat is our biggest confectionery brand and therefore the obvious choice to identify a sat fat reduction.

"Improving the nutritional profile of Kit Kat does not come at the expense of quality and taste and consumers will continue to enjoy the same Kit Kat as they have for over 75 years."

Saturated fat was blamed for growing rates of heart disease and diabetes in the 1970s, following the landmark "seven countries" study by the American scientist Ancel Keys. However, the British physiologist John Yudkin disagreed with what became the conventional public health wisdom, arguing that the problem was sugar. Yudkin's cause has been taken up again in recent years, notably by the US paediatrician Robert Lustig, in his book Fat Chance: The Bitter Truth about Sugar.

Lustig and others argue that the low fat craze may have actually done harm to people's health, because food manufacturers add sugar into low fat products to compensate for the loss of taste and texture after the fats are removed.

Aseem Malhotra, the interventional cardiology specialist registrar who wrote the BMJ article and said he had advised his patients to eat butter instead of low fat spreads, was unimpressed by the food manufacturers' pledges. Saturated fat, at least in non-processed foods, is not harmful, he said, but sugar is.

"This is the food industry paying lip service to the government," he said. "The root cause of the obesity epidemic is the food environment and if the department of health is serious about tackling the problem, they should listen to the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges."

The academy's report, published this year, recommended a ban on fast food outlets near schools and on TV ads for food high in salt, sugar and fat before 9pm, as well as a tax on sugary drinks.

Nestle says that in reducing the saturated fat in a two-finger KitKat bar from 3.3g to 2.9g it will not raise the sugar content. "The saturated fat reduction in Kit Kat has been made by changing the oil that is used to make the wafer filling," said a spokesperson.

The sugar content of the popular chocolate remains the same. There are 10.4g of sugar in a two-finger bar, which is the equivalent of 49.5g per 100g of Kit Kat. In other words, a Kit Kat is half sugar.

Oreo biscuits contain a slightly smaller proportion of sugar, at 35g per 100g and 8.3g of saturated fat. Barny, a sponge biscuit containing chocolate, is also one third sugar ”“ 9.6g in a 30g biscuit and 1.4g of saturated fat. A 12.5g belVita breakfast biscuit contains 0.5g of saturated fat and 2.5g of sugar.

Subway, another signatory to the pledge, is trying to tackle the sugar issue by substituting the biscuits and crisps in its Kids Pak meal deal with fruit and vegetables, which also has the desired effect of cutting the saturated fat by 70%.

Compass, the biggest provider of school meals, says it will promote healthier menus as well as reducing saturated fat.

The Faculty of Public Health (FPH) said the supermarket and manufacture pledges would not make enough of a difference.

Prof John Ashton, the FPH president, said: "At a time when public spending is under scrutiny, it costs the NHS £5bn a year to treat obesity. So it is a good thing that some companies are making food that has less saturated fat than before.

"They need to ensure that at the same time they lower the sugar and salt that they have used to make foods more tasty as a result of lowering the fat content".

[jdaw1]

Excellent: the opposite of what is recommended by the recent BMJ opinion.

[djewesbury]

Of course, Port is quite high in sugar, comparative to other wines. Which is what he says is the real killer...

[LGTrotter]

I thought that the main thing they were banging on about was refined sugar. A the risk of sounding foolish wouldn't most of the sugars in port be fructose and therefore darned good for us?

[djewesbury]

I thought that the main thing they were banging on about was refined sugar. A the risk of sounding foolish wouldn't most of the sugars in port be fructose and therefore darned good for us?

Fructose is not damned good for us. Think of all those food products that are stuffed with fructose.. Oh I don't know. Can't you go and solve the puzzle now?

[jdaw1]

There is no evidence, neither epidemiological nor experimental, suggesting that any harm is done by alcohol or sugars over twenty-one years old.

Sure, rodents fed recently manufactured Yugoslav industrial alcohol then live unfulfilling lives. Moral: don't be a lab rat.

[Glenn E.]

There is no evidence, neither epidemiological nor experimental, suggesting that any harm is done by alcohol or sugars over twenty-one years old.

The ever-expanding American waistline begs to differ.

[Alex Bridgeman]

There is no evidence, neither epidemiological nor experimental, suggesting that any harm is done by alcohol or sugars over twenty-one years old.

The ever-expanding American waistline begs to differ.

But how many of those expanding Americans have been fed sugars or alcohols where the sugar / alcohol is over 21 years old?
And how many have been fed sugar / alcohol which has not been bottle or cask matured?

Surely the facts speak for themselves? Sugar / alcohol should be matured for at least 21 years before being consumed.

[Glenn E.]

There is no evidence, neither epidemiological nor experimental, suggesting that any harm is done by alcohol or sugars over twenty-one years old.

The ever-expanding American waistline begs to differ.

But how many of those expanding Americans have been fed sugars or alcohols where the sugar / alcohol is over 21 years old?
And how many have been fed sugar / alcohol which has not been bottle or cask matured?

Surely the facts speak for themselves? Sugar / alcohol should be matured for at least 21 years before being consumed.

An excellent point. I mis-read Julian's post and thought he was talking about the age of the imbiber. Silly me.

[Alex Bridgeman]

There is no evidence, neither epidemiological nor experimental, suggesting that any harm is done by alcohol or sugars over twenty-one years old.

The ever-expanding American waistline begs to differ.

But how many of those expanding Americans have been fed sugars or alcohols where the sugar / alcohol is over 21 years old?
And how many have been fed sugar / alcohol which has not been bottle or cask matured?

Surely the facts speak for themselves? Sugar / alcohol should be matured for at least 21 years before being consumed.

An excellent point. I mis-read Julian's post and thought he was talking about the age of the imbiber. Silly me.

[djewesbury]

Surely the facts speak for themselves? Sugar / alcohol should be matured for at least 21 years before being consumed.

Please revise this guidance. I have a LOT of Croft LBV 04 downstairs and a bucketload of G94, V94, SVau 00 and FUR on the way!

[DRT]

Surely the facts speak for themselves? Sugar / alcohol should be matured for at least 21 years before being consumed.

Please revise this guidance. I have a LOT of Croft LBV 04 downstairs and a bucketload of G94, V94, SVau 00 and FUR on the way!

Presumably the G94 and V94 are typos in that list? Please tell me you are not using those as daily drinkers

[djewesbury]

Not daily drinkers, but all under 21!