Low and no-alcohol lifestyle booms

About 5 million people will drink their first beer or glass of wine that they have consumed in a month next week as “dry January” comes to an end.

However for an increasing number of people it will be an entirely dry year, as low and no-alcohol becomes the lifestyle of choice for many people.

Tesco says its sales of low-alcohol wines have more than doubled. The supermarket’s wine expert Alexandra Runciman, says: “Consumption of alcohol in the UK down is down by 18% over the last decade and we’re seeing more customers looking for a quality wine-drinking experience without the alcohol.”

Drinking rates among British adults are at their lowest since 2005. A recent Office for National Statistics survey found the proportion who drank alcohol at least once a week declined from 64.2% to 56.9% last year. Almost 100,000 people officially signed up to the “dry January” challenge this year – about 40% up on 2017 – while millions more joined in unofficially.

The trend is particularly prevalent among young people: more than a quarter of 16- to 24-year-olds do not drink.

Stuart Elkington, founder of specialist online store Dry Drinker, says his sales have more than doubled in the last 12 months. He believes an improvement in the taste of low- and no-alcohol beers and wines has combined with a general desire to cut calories, be healthy and avoid waking up with a hangover.

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Sugar tax ‘could increase amount of alcohol that we drink’

A new study suggests that the introduction of the sugar tax on soft drinks could have the unintended consequence of driving up alcohol consumption.

Experts examined if price hikes to soft drinks could lead to higher rates of purchase for other drinks – such as alcohol.

The model used data from the expenditure of 32,000 British households in 2012/13 and analysed six million drinks purchases including milk, juice, high-sugar drinks and alcohol.

The experts found that people from poorer homes were more likely to buy high-sugar drinks and spirits while richer homes were more likely to buy juices and wine.

Taking this model in to account it would indicate that an increase in the cost of diet or low-sugar drinks could lead to hikes in the sales of beer, cider and wines.

But an increase in the price of medium-sugar drinks could actually reduce sales of alcoholic drinks, according to the study, published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.

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