After the very sad news that the premature death of Charles Kennedy was related to his struggle with alcohol, I have been asked a lot about recommended limits and thought I’d try to explain.
Current recommendations are that women should limit their alcohol intake to 14 units a week and men to 21. It is also recommended that you have at least two dry days each week.
We used to say a unit was a glass of wine but today our glasses are often larger and wine is stronger so a home poured glass of wine is likely to be nearer three units than one. To calculate your units, you simply need to look at the percent alcohol of the drink that you are drinking. So, let’s make the maths easy, say you are drinking 12% wine (and many wines are actually stronger than that), that means there are 12 units of alcohol in a litre and therefore 3/4 of 12 ie 9 in a standard 75dcl bottle. So if you pour yourself a large (250ml) glass of wine you are drinking three units and as a woman if you did that five nights of the week you would be exceeding recommended limits. Scary isn’t it?
