“A SPOONFUL OF SUGAR MAKES THE MEDICINE GO DOWN!”

OK, I hold my hands up – I did watch ‘Mary Poppins’ in 1964 – but I was only 15 years-old! But George Osborne seems to have watched it more recently if the announcement of a sugar levy in his Budget is anything to go by. But if he hoped the sugar levy would distract from his cuts to benefits for the disabled, then the resignation of Iain Duncan-Smith a couple of days later scuppered that one. As Harold Wilson put it: “A week is a long time in politics.”

But what are we to make of the sugar levy? Is this a genuine attempt to make us healthier, or just another cynical ploy to appease a noisy campaign group, whilst distracting us from the cuts? What is interesting is how the management of expectations has kicked-in since the measure was announced. Before the Budget Jamie Oliver was claiming that a sugar tax would be a “game changer”; then after the announcement, in a moment of euphoria that must have been almost like a sugar-rush, he proclaimed that the measure would “send ripples around the world”. Then he came down to earth with a bump and said it was just a “symbolic slap” for the soft drinks’ industry. From game-changer to symbolic slap whilst hardly pausing to take breath.

The campaign group Action on Sugar is naturally delighted, although they have always said that it is just a “useful first step”. And this is what concerns me most: that these types of policy proposals are always presented to us by campaigners in the media as isolated measures. The truth is they are door-openers to much wider measures that will see state regulation of the food chain and mass product reformulation. If the problem, as presented to us, is that the incidence of obesity at the population level is too high - something like a third of the adult population are said to be obese - then are we seriously supposed to believe that a sugar levy that will raise the price of a can of pop from 69 pence to 77 pence will lead to a measurable reduction in population levels of obesity? Because if not, why introduce it?

Here we come back to the “useful first step” scenario. Certainly a levy that will raise £520 million in its first year will be a useful first step for a government desperate to fill an £18 billion hole, but what will the next steps be? Fortunately, we don’t have to guess, because Action on Sugar have, at the request of Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt, provided some helpful suggestions. Here they are:

• Reduce added sugars by 40 per cent by 2020 by reformulating foods (a similar  rogramme to salt).
• Reduce fat in ultra-processed foods, particularly saturated fat – 15 per cent reduction by 2020.
• Cease all forms of marketing of ultra-processed, unhealthy foods and drinks to children.
• Disassociate physical activity with obesity via banning junk food sports sponsorships.
• Limit the availability of ultra-processed foods and sweetened soft drinks as well as reducing portion size.
• Incentivise healthier food and discourage drinking of soft drinks by planning to introduce a sugar tax.
• Remove responsibility for nutrition from the Department of Health and return it back to an independent agency.

Well, number 6 is in the bag, so watch this space.

At the heart of all these proposals is the implicit belief that government must regulate because consumers are either too dumb to make their “sensible choices”, or else they are hopelessly addicted to products that have been deliberately spiked with sugar, salt and fat – ingredients that titillate the taste buds – and that ‘Big Food’ has addiction as a core part of its strategy. This fantasy of corporate coercion is at the heart of ‘healthism’ – the ideology of ‘the health of the nation.’

In fact there is no market failure in relation to sugary drinks – all the major producers sell sugar-free, low carb and calorie-free versions – Coke Zero and Diet Coke are just two examples that come to mind. But that isn’t enough for the healthist zealots. ‘Aspartame’, which is used as a sugar-substitute in many of these sugar-free alternatives, is then pilloried as being even worse for your health by a series of scare stories which have precious little to do with science. Read “Aspartame – the truth” on the NHS Choices website if you don’t believe me.

The puritanical nature of the sugar-phobes is thus plain for all to see. They won’t be satisfied until all food is bland, tasteless and “good for your health.” The fact is that many of the things that give us pleasure involve consumption. And many of these things are bad for us – at least if consumed to excess. But we don’t have to make a zero-sum choice between maximising pleasure or maximising health, most people seek a balance summed up by the old maxim “A Little Bit of What You fancy Does You Good, but Everything in Moderation.” I’d rather decide for myself what those trade-offs should be, I don’t need the state to do it for me.

Paul Chase

MORE ILL-INFORMED MEDDLING

You may not have heard of the Road Traffic Act 1988 (Alcohol Limits) (Amendment Bill), but it was a private members Bill introduced in the House of Lords by Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe, a Labour peer. The effect of this amendment, had it been introduced, would have been to lower the drink drive limit from 80 milligrams of alcohol in 100 millilitres of blood to 30 milligrams – which is already the drink drive limit in Scotland. In Scotland this change has had a devastating effect on pubs, and particularly pubs in rural areas. The Scottish Licensed Trade Association (SLTA) has stated that the introduction of this measure has been “catastrophic” for pubs, with people who might have stopped-off for a pint on the way home from work now deciding not to do so.

In a debate in the House of Lords on the 11^th March a number of comments were made that are worthy of note. Lord Rae, also a labour peer, had this to say:

“The Scottish licensed catering association (sic) has said that the introduction of that measure has been “catastrophic” for the industry. In other words, drinking as a whole has gone down—no one has mentioned that effect of the measure—quite apart from any effect on accidents on the roads. When the prohibition on smoking in public places came in, it reduced the prevalence of heart disease. Heart attacks, for instance, came down measurably as a result of that step. Therefore, small measures such as the one we are discussing will gradually reduce the consumption of alcohol, which, when used excessively, is very harmful, as we all know.”

Now, what is wrong with this statement? Well, just about everything. Firstly, the fact that consumption in pubs has fallen as a result of the change to the drink-drive limit does not prove that alcohol consumption as a whole has fallen. What we know is that there is a long-term trend away from drinking in pubs and bars and towards drinking at home, where the measures that people pour for themselves are generally much larger than they those served in a pub. Lowering the drink-drive limit can only serve to accelerate that trend. Secondly, a measure that is designed to reduce population levels of alcohol consumption shouldn’t be smuggled in as a measure to reduce drink-driving. Thirdly, there is no evidence that the reduction in the limit in Scotland has reduced drink-drive deaths or injuries. Certainly, as the government peer Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon pointed out:

“It is also important to note that the penalties for drink-driving in England and Wales are more severe than in other countries, and despite the majority of these other countries having lower alcohol limits, they do not have a better record on reducing drink-drive casualties. The Government therefore maintain our position that lowering the limit in itself is not going to change people’s behaviour and would not be the best use of resources to improve safety on our roads at this time.”

Well said sir! But Lord Rae then goes on to cite the smoking ban as having directly led to a reduction in the prevalence of heart disease and a measurable reduction in heart attacks; his point being that small changes can have big effects which are a kind of bonus to the effects originally intended. Only one problem, the smoking ban has had absolutely no effect on the prevalence of heart disease or the incidence of heart attacks.

Running up the white flag of surrender, the last word in this debate went to Lord Brooke, the author of the amendment:

“I hope that the many individuals, organisations and members of the public who have supported me — I express my public gratitude to them — and who are in favour of this measure will continue to put pressure on the Government to bring about a change which will be in the best interests of all concerned, other than, perhaps, the drinks and hospitality industry.”

Well perish the thought that we should even consider the interests of the drinks and hospitality industry – after all they just create wealth and jobs and generate taxes so these ill-informed, unelected and unaccountable jobsworths can meddle in things they don’t understand. But then again, it was the Lords that rejected nationalisation of pubs in 1908. Well at least they got one thing right in the last hundred years!

BORIS BASHES BINGERS – PART 2!

Back in 2011 I wrote a piece for Propel titled “Boris Bashes Bingers”, in which I outlined a scheme put forward by London Mayor Boris Johnson whereby drunken offenders would be subject to “sobriety orders”, and would have to report to police stations twice a day for sobriety tests to ensure their compliance. The government quite rightly refused to finance this scheme on the grounds of practicality, but Boris came back with a high-tech solution from America: a “sobriety bracelet scheme” for those convicted of serious drink-related offences who might otherwise have been sent to prison. 

I expressed back then my reservations about this scheme, but then heard nothing more about it, and assumed it had either died a death or been trialled and found wanting. But not a bit of it! The scheme has been trialled in south London and two other areas – Cheshire and Northamptonshire. It works like this: 

On conviction for a drink-related offence the Court orders a community sentence, but imposes a “sobriety condition”; the offender must abstain from drinking alcohol for 120 days – down from the six months that was originally envisaged.  To enforce this, the offender is fitted with an ankle bracelet that can detect alcohol by measuring air and perspiration emissions from the skin every 30 minutes. Blood alcohol levels as low as 0.02% can apparently be detected, and the bracelets can tell when the alcohol was consumed and then electronically transmit that information to a monitoring station. The police are then informed that the offender has broken his “sobriety condition” and can arrest him and bring him before the court.

Boris Johnson has hailed the trial of this scheme as a success: “Sobriety tags have proved a fantastic success in helping offenders across south London to stay off the booze and avoid the circumstances under which they might reoffend.” Apparently 91% of the tagged offenders complied with the sobriety order and stayed off the booze for 120 days. This compares with only 61% of offenders who complied with traditional community service orders for alcohol-related offences. 

Point proved? Not quite. Only 113 offenders were put on these tags during the 12-month trial and 9 breached the condition, leaving 104 who complied. A good result for a very small sample of people who, I suspect, were specially selected as “suitable cases for treatment”. The 61% success rate (or 39% failure rate if you prefer) for those offenders sentenced to other forms of community order is clearly a percentage of a much larger number. I can’t discover what that number is, but Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, stated recently that 80% of offences committed in London were related to alcohol. That would be at least 588,821 recorded offences then, if you believe this statement, which personally I don’t. Just what does “related to alcohol” mean?

This is a classic example of how politicians desperate for positive headlines work: hail as a “fantastic success” a scheme involving a small number of people specially selected as suitable cases for treatment, and then make an invalid comparison with a much larger group of people which represents the generality of offenders who haven’t been selected – and fail to mention that! We can tell nothing form this scheme except how base the motives of politicians are!

I am very much in favour of people being held responsible for their own misbehaviour, rather than ever-greater server liability, but I think we need to put sobriety bracelets into the context of the other measures supported by police and others for the control of the night-time economy: breathalyser tests carried out by door supervisors, ID scanners and potentially drug detection dogs. Whilst acknowledging that drunkenness and alcohol-related crime – howsoever defined – is a serious problem, it is a serious problem that all the crime surveys say is declining, so I don’t feel there is a pressing need to turn our city centres into leisure ghettos or our venues into fortresses. I want to see alcohol-related domestic violence reduced. But we surely need to incentivise people to drink out of home rather than at home if we want to achieve that.

It’s not difficult to imagine a development of this technology so that it could be applied to the operation of individual licensed premises. I can imagine the Government empowering licensing authorities to require premises in the night-time economy to provide a bracelet to every customer on a Friday and Saturday night. If the customer consumes more than, say, four units of alcohol, this is electronically communicated to a unit behind the bar, the bracelet illuminates and the customer has to leave. It’s the logical next step if you’re asking door supervisors to test for sobriety on entry. But surely I’m being paranoid, right? Surely no government is going to regulate the tick-and-tock of individual behaviour in this way? That’s precisely what people said when the smoking ban was first mooted. Watch this space.

THE SCREAM TEST

“I sense a huge disturbance in the force” said Obi-Wan Kenobe - immediately after the Empire had used the Death Star to destroy an entire planet. From the wailing and gnashing of teeth amongst health lobby cranks over the past couple of weeks you could be forgiven for thinking that something of similar consequence had happened. What could it be? Well, two things have really upset them: firstly the enactment, after a trial, of an anti-sock puppet regulation prohibiting charities from using taxpayers money, received from government, to lobby government; and secondly, the announcement that the government will not, after all, introduce a sugar tax.

Forgive me if I sound just a little smug, but the health racket has always applied something called the “scream test” to policies directed at our industry: if the policy makes Big Alcohol or Big Food scream, then it must be bad for “them” and good for “us”. There’s nothing like getting a dose of your own medicine boys!

So what has been the response to these measures? According to the Daily Telegraph campaigners have reacted with fury to reports that the government has rejected the proposal for a sugar tax of up to 20 percent, preferring instead to agreeing “voluntary measures” with industry to reduce sugar content of foods, but with the threat of a sugar tax if they don’t. Tam Fry, spokesman for the National Obesity Forum, said: “The decision must be reversed or it will be more proof that the Government is in the thrall of the food industry and the sugar barons will have won yet again.” And he continued: “NHS chiefs know full well that the combination of child and adult obesity could topple the UK’s most cherished institution.”

No it won’t Tam! Actually both adult and child obesity rates have stabilised recently and the whole moral panic over obesity is being kept going by projections about future obesity rates which are as unlikely to materialise as the previous ones. “This could be the end for the NHS” is the perennial cry of those who want to frighten us into state control of diet, or else the national religion will fall over.

And then there is the response of Graham MacGregor, chairman and founder of Action on Sugar. He’s so miffed he’s threatening to take his ball back and go and play for another country: “We won’t stop  and if the UK don’t want to stop doing it (sic), we will go to another country like Argentina or Chile which are much better organised in terms of public health and nutrition.” Really Graham, really? General Galtieri and General Pinochet must be turning in their graves!

And what of Nanny in Residence Sarah Wollaston MP, chair of the Commons Health Select Committee? Well, she’s not happy either. She’s been locked in a battle with Jeremy Hunt, the health secretary over the sugar tax and she’s even less pleased about government ending tax-payer funding of faux charities that use the money to lobby government. She fears that this will tip the balance even more in favour of Big Food and away from public health. Well, Sarah, quite a lot of people feel that the imbalance has been in the direction of so-called “public health” for far too long and that this is a much-needed correction.

The actual phrase that will be inserted into all new and renewed grant agreements reads: “The following costs are not Eligible Expenditure: Payments that support activity intended to influence or attempt to influence Parliament, Government or political parties, or attempting to influence the awarding or renewal of contracts and grants, or attempting to influence legislative or regulatory action”. And much credit goes to the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) and their director of lifestyle economics Chris Snowdon for researching and campaigning on this issue. Interestingly, those who don’t like the change are now referring to the IEA as a “neo-liberal” think-tank – conjuring-up images of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, who are not on most peoples’ Christmas card list!

Of course, ‘public health’ can always point to the chief medical officer’s Revised Drinking Guidelines as a triumph can’t they? Well, no; these have been met with almost universal derision and a storm of criticism. Reportedly the Department of Health is distinctly rattled over the response to the new ‘low-risk’ guidelines and public support from ministers for Dame Sally Davies’s piece of science-denial has been conspicuous by its absence. And the “there is no safe level of drinking” mantra has quickly been followed by “there is no safe level of sun bathing” – in sunny February! And Dame Sally’s two pieces of advice: “When reaching for a glass of wine, do what I do and ask do I want this glass of wine or do I want to increase my risk of cancer?” and “Use six tea-spoons of sun cream” before going out into the sunshine. Oh dear!

All we need now is formal confirmation from the Scottish courts in a few weeks’ time that minimum pricing is dead and I shall throw a party!

VIRTUE SIGNALLING – PART 2

In my last article I wrote about “virtue signalling” – the tendency of some people to adopt modes of thought or action as a means of signalling to others how virtuous they are – regardless of whether their actions have any operative significance. The tendency to say “me too” in respect of utterly vacuous policies like sugar taxes, minimum alcohol pricing, plain packaging of cigarettes and health warnings on bottles of booze, is a way of signalling which side of the moral divide you’re on in respect of a range of apparently disparate issues which are in fact connected, in that they represent a kind of new puritanism.

Almost without exception virtue signalling is about gesture politics. It is an easy way of appearing to do something that doesn’t require too much effort. It almost always involves imposing bans, taxes or regulations. And more often than not it signifies a moral disapproval that is rooted in a kind of crude anti-capitalism. Not all of this meddling is restricted to what we eat, drink or smoke. But a lot of it is.

Which brings me to “vaping”. I’m not a smoker and never have been. I spent 23 years running licensed premises in which people were allowed to smoke tobacco and I just took it for granted. When the smoking ban was first mooted I felt then as I feel now: that it should be up to operators to decide whether to allow it or not; or whether to have a smoking room; in essence, give people a choice. But it was not to be. I don’t intend to rehearse the whole debate about smoking and second-hand smoke, but I do think that the advent of vaping has created a dilemma for the virtue signallers who walk amongst us, and the smoking debate has been resurrected in a different form.

The Welsh government is proposing to ban vaping in enclosed public spaces – to treat vapers like smokers. The ban is supposed to kick-in sometime in 2017. But health minister Mark Drakeford has recently told the Welsh Assembly’s health and social care committee that vaping would be allowed in wet-led pubs that don’t serve food, and where unaccompanied children are banned. But it appears uncertain exactly what this means. As Assembly member Darren Millar put it: “Many wet-led pubs serve pickled eggs, pork scratching and packets of crisps on the bar. Are these pubs included in the ban or not?”

What is it that gets into people and makes them feel it is necessary to get into the granular detail, the tick-and-tock of other peoples’ lives in this way? There is a division of opinion amongst the public health community with the British Medical Association, Public Health Wales and the Centre for Tobacco Control Research all favouring a ban (and not just in Wales). But Cancer Research UK, the British Heart Foundation Wales and Action on Smoking and Health are all opposed. The reason for this division is that while most people see vaping as a means by which people can enjoy the recreational use of nicotine without inhaling the carcinogens in tobacco, others say it is a gateway to smoking, not a way of kicking the habit. Overwhelmingly the research demonstrates that it is a way of giving up, not a way of starting.

But here’s where the health and moral aspects of this issue get intertwined. Nicotine is a drug; and it is seen as a drug of addiction. So should people be encouraged to use it at all? And insofar as vaping represents a private sector solution to a public health problem - that is something that makes some in the public health racket feel very nervous indeed. So better to signal that vaping is just a less-bad way of smoking by treating vapours as smokers, but maybe with a few concessions.

What makes this kind of restriction even more of a piece of virtue signalling nonsense is that in the vast majority of pubs and bars vapours go outside with smokers in any event. Some operators insist on that as a matter of policy, and I understand why. It is difficult to explain to your customers why one way of enjoying nicotine is permitted inside, but the other requires you to leave the building. It creates control dilemmas for operators and their staff. So, why not do with vaping what we should have done with smoking – leave it to the operator to decide what their policy is in relation to vaping, and leave it to customers to decide where they want to drink.

Paul Chase

VIRTUE-SIGNALLING AND BASEBALL CAPS

Going back around twenty five years or so pop stars, celebrities, and other people who were famous for being famous began to wear baseball caps. It started in America. It became cool. If you wore your baseball cap the wrong way round it was even cooler. It spread to Europe and the UK and before long everyone under thirty was wearing a baseball cap. Even the fact that William Hague, the (then) young leader of the Conservative Party wore one wasn’t enough to put people off. This is sometimes called “fashion” or “the latest craze”. It’s what happens when people whose brain power isn’t sufficient to blow their hats off decide it’s probably safe to wear one. People yearn for a sense of belonging, and so the wearing of a baseball cap became a way of signalling “I am one of you”.

But this desire to signal to others that you have joined their tribe, or to castigate others who haven’t joined yours, isn’t limited to harmless sartorial fads; it applies to ideas and in particular it applies to moral ideas. Some people like nothing better than sitting in judgement of how other people live their lives. TV soap operas have trained them in how to do it. And if they can wag their fore-finger at other peoples’ behaviour, whilst advocating a “better way of life”, then not only does this provide them with a means of occupying the moral high-ground, it thereby signals how virtuous they are. 

“Virtue-signalling” is very much in vogue at the moment. We’ve seen numerous examples of it in recent months. For example, Dr Sarah Wollaston MP, who chairs the Commons Select Committee on Health, is an inveterate virtue-signaller. Her one-sided trial of the sugar industry predictably resulted in a call for the government to introduce a “sugar tax” on fizzy drinks. She was aided and abetted in this by poster-boy Jamie Oliver who has applied a sugar tax to such drinks in his restaurants. This is a classic example of virtue-signalling, because if you look at the amount of sugar in his Eton Mess you can clearly see that his actions are designed to send out a “me too” signal of virtue whilst hoping no one notices that he isn’t really serious (about anything). 

Virtue-signalling, like fashion fads, has all the characteristics of a virus. It spreads to people who haven’t got good intellectual immune systems. And so it is that we hear that the NHS is about to introduce a faux tax on sugary drinks in its hospital eateries. No doubt someone will produce a mathematical model that shows how effective this has been in tackling the “obesity crisis” which threatens to “bankrupt the NHS”. This will be used as a means of persuading government to introduce it more widely. Meanwhile Public Health England can puff themselves up with self-righteous moral virtue at how they are leading by example (at some financial cost to patients). If you’re forced to cancel hospital parking charges I guess you have to recoup the money somehow.

And then there is the dogged determination of the SNP government in Scotland to introduce minimum unit pricing. It must have been so gratifying for them to attend the conference of the Global Alcohol Policy Alliance (temperance cranks), which they hosted last year in Edinburgh, and be acclaimed as “Scotland the Brave”. Let’s hope this is some solace for them because in the wake of this the European Court of Justice effectively ruled minimum pricing contrary to EU trade law.

Finally there is our hapless Chief Medical Officer, Dame Sally Davies. Sally was prepared to abandon ninety years of science that proved the protective health effects of moderate drinking in order to justify new “low risk” drinking guidelines of just 14 units a week for both men and women. Virtue-signallers love simple messages because they instinctively believe that ordinary folk are too thick to understand anything even slightly complex. I can’t decide whether Sally did this to signal to the other members of the “public health” racket that she is one of them, whilst knowing that this was bunk, or whether she was leaned on to compromise the science in the name of creating a new factoid: “there is no safe level of drinking”. Predictably, all the other fuss-buckets who earn their livings from flapping around in the unhappiness of others signalled their agreement – Alcohol Concern, the Institute for Alcohol Studies, Professor Gilmore from the Alcohol Health Alliance, and countless foot soldiers from local councils who have now been placed in charge of “public health” – all said “me too”.

You could be forgiven for thinking they were all engaged in a conspiracy. But actually you don’t need to imply a conspiracy when they all think alike. I quite like baseball caps now that they’re no longer fashionable. I wonder how long it will take for virtue-signalling to go out of fashion. It can get awfully cold up there on the moral high-ground.

Here We Go Again

The doom-mongers of the public health racket have been fast out of the blocks this year, wasting no time reminding us that we really shouldn’t enjoy ourselves without consulting the doctor first. But let’s start with some good news: minimum unit pricing.

Minimum Unit Pricing (MUP)

On the 23^rd December the European Court of Justice (ECJ) released its final opinion on the compatibility of MUP with EU law. To no one’s surprise this confirmed the draft opinion, published in September, that MUP is contrary to EU law if less restrictive tax measures can be introduced. It is worthy of note that the ECJ refers to “less restrictive tax measures” not confining itself to alcohol duty – which is controlled by Westminster, not Holyrood. The Scottish Government will now get a range of new tax raising powers so cannot say they have no powers to deal with alcohol abuse other than minimum pricing.

Putting a brave face on it, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon again noted that it was for the Scottish court to decide on the legality of MUP. It’s as if she regards the ECJ as an advisory body to which she can say “thanks very much for your opinion, duly noted, but we’re going ahead anyway.” She would do well to read the Note at the end of the ECJ’s press release. The Note states that courts and tribunals of Member States can refer disputes that have been brought before them to the ECJ for an interpretation of EU law. Crucially it adds: “The Court of Justice does not decide the dispute itself. It is for the national court or tribunal to dispose of the case in accordance with the Court’s decision, which is similarly binding on other courts or tribunals before which a similar issue is raised (my bolding).”

This is hugely significant. Unless the Scottish Government can provide evidence to the court that proves MUP, and only MUP, can address Scotland’s particular problems with alcohol and health – something they have singularly failed to do so far – then the Scottish minimum pricing legislation is incompatible with EU law and cannot be enacted. In addition, the ECJ’s ruling will apply to current minimum unit pricing proposals in Wales, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.

This may well chunter-on to a final ruling in the UK’s Supreme Court in London, but I think this measure is effectively dead in the water.

Revised lower-risk drinking guidelines

We await the official publication of these, but it has been widely reported that lower-risk guidelines for men should be reduced to the same level as for women – 2 to 3 units a day – but with an added proviso that we should all have two alcohol-free days a week. This is odd. The lower limits for women are based upon the fact that women metabolize alcohol differently to men, because pound for pound they have less water and more fatty tissue than men. Because fat retains alcohol and water dilutes it, alcohol remains at higher concentrations for longer periods of time in a woman’s body, exposing her brain and other organs to more alcohol. Women also have lower levels of two enzymes – alcohol dehydrogenase and aldehyde dehydrogenase that break down alcohol in the stomach and liver. As a result women absorb more alcohol into their bloodstreams than men.

Have these simple biological facts changed? No. So it’s hard not to reach the conclusion that chief medical officer Sally Davies just wants to simplify the message regardless of the science because of some highly theoretical risk factors that arise out of very low levels of consumption. A more rational approach to setting lower-risk guidelines is to ask at what point a moderate drinker’s risk of dying from all causes exceeds that of a person who doesn’t drink. We know from the meta-study done by Augusto Di Castelnuovo in 2006 that for men that level is between 3.4 and 6.8 units a day, and for women it is between 1.7 and 5.1 units a day. Sorry Sally, but your revised lower-risk guidelines will lack credibility with the public and serve little purpose except for providing another stick with which to beat the alcohol industry

Calorie labelling on beverage alcohol products to combat obesity?

The Local Government Association has called for calorie labelling on bottles and cans of alcohol, calling on breweries and drinks’ producers to “show leadership in tackling the obesity crisis”. Dr. Sarah Jarvis told Sky News she was “amazed at how little people understand” about the calories in alcohol. I sympathise Sarah, I’m always amazed when people don’t share my obsessions too. Well, I have good news! Diageo is introducing calorie labelling on all its products in 2016 and is presently consulting on the most effective way to communicate this information. Other drinks producers are likely to follow suit.

But here’s a thought: the calories contained in an alcoholic drink are contained in the alcohol. A gram of alcohol has 7 calories (as compared to 4 in a gram of sugar and 9 in a gram of fat); there are 8 grams of alcohol in a UK unit. Therefore there are 56 calories in a unit of alcohol – so a small measure of whisky (1 unit) has 56 calories; a pint of session beer with 4% abv has 2.27 units and therefore 127 calories; a pint of lager with an abv of 5% has 2.84 units and therefore 159 calories – so not massively calorific products. And through the industry voluntary responsibility deal we’ve removed 1.2 billion units of alcohol from circulation. This equates to reducing the calorific intake of drinkers by 67.2 billion calories. Name me another industry that has done more than that to fight obesity!