Average Briton drinks 84 times their bodyweight in alcohol

Average Briton drinks 84 times their bodyweight in alcohol

By Sophie Borland and Neil Sears

Last updated at 6:24 PM on 30th November 2009

• Comments (21)
  
• Add to My Stories
  

The average adult consumes 84 times their body weight in alcoholic beverages in their lifetime, research has suggested.

Or, in other words, if all the drinks we consume in our lifetime were to be placed on a giant pair of scales, they would balance an adult bull elephant.

Soaring levels of binge drinking mean that many Britons drink an average of 3.7 pints of beer, or 8.5 large glasses of wine, each week.

Enlarge Carol Vorderman at the launch of the ALCulator, a tool which is part of Lloydspharmacy's Neighbourhood Health Watch programme, at the Spice Buffet Pub in Birmingham

If they were to sustain this for 60 years of their life they would consume 11,800 pints - which weighs in at 6.6 tons, the same as an adult elephant.

For an average adult weighing 12 and a half stone, this works out as 84 times their body weight, according to figures compiled by Lloyds Pharmacy.

The research warns that many drinkers consume around 1,000 calories each week just from alcohol.

This means they could put on an extra pound every 3.5 weeks if they do not take any exercise.

More...

• A very merry Christmas: Europe's largest wine warehouse prepares to dispatch 36 million bottles for the festive season
  

If they kept this up over a year they would put on more than a stone.

The UK currently has one of the highest rates of binge-drinking in Europe, and alcohol is believed to be responsible for 40,000 deaths a year.

But the true scale of the problem is far more widespread and drink has been blamed for surge in violence, particularly amongst women.

Opposition MPs and campaigners say that Britons are now consuming more alcohol than ever before thanks to round-the clock drinking, brought in by Labour, and the increased availability of cheap booze in the supermarkets.

Figures published earlier this month revealed that were 1,057,000 violent attacks by strangers last year - the equivalent of 2,895 a day or 120 every hour.

Some 21 per cent of the assaults took place in pubs and a further 34 per cent in the street as town centres became increasingly scarred by alcohol-fuelled violence.

At the same time academics have warned that alcohol could soon overtake smoking as a cause of death.

They blame alcohol for many cancers as well as high blood pressure which causes strokes and heart attacks. Experts have also attributed binge drinking for a surge in liver disease with rates doubling over the last 10 years.

Recent research has found that the middle aged are drinking even more than the young. Forty per cent of those aged 45 to 64 are drinking on between three and seven days a week, almost double the level of those aged 18 to 24., according retail analysts.

Lloyds Pharmacy also estimate that the average Brit spends £770 a year on alcohol. Their research coincides with the launch of an online tool - the Alculator- which works out how people's lifetime alcohol consumption.

Former Countdown host Carol Vorderman, who has backed the research, said: 'A glass or two of your favourite tipple every day doesn’t sound like a big deal - but depending on the size of your glass and your drink of choice, this can easily push you over the recommended limit.'