Alcohol Guidelines (Again)

I already mentioned the new government guidelines last week (here), but now that they're out some further comment...

Recommended limits are indeed reduced to 14 units per week. One thing that I found interesting is that, aside from the reduction in the limit, the way that it is communicated has also changed.

At one point, the recommendation was 21 units per week for men. There was a worry that people would 'save this up' and consume all 21 units on a Friday night. Consequently, the advice was changed to 3-4 units per day, to underline that it couldn't be 'saved up'. Now, however, the worry is that people are drinking every day and not allowing their body 'recovery days' and so we're back to weekly guidelines (with an explicit recommendation not to drink every day).

I guess this is just another case that highlights the difficulty of imparting nuanced advice - based on scientific findings - in simple guidelines. That said, an older piece from Lee Jones - here - questions to the extent to which the policy really is evidence-based. He suggests that politicians have a moralistic agenda and cherry-pick evidence (and ignore counter evidence) in order to serve their purposes.

Clearly not all politicians take this view though. I wouldn't normally approve of Nigel Farage's pronouncements, but he's suggested that we all have a glass of something to protest against this state nannying.