They’re kidding right? The companies can’t possibly trying to tempt young people by  using images of young adults having a lot of fun and they just all happen to be holding on to a glass or bottle filled with alcohol. (Sarcasm doesn’t translate well to the Internet, does it?)

Researchers decided to do a study about magazine ads and teens to determine if the Wine Institute, the Beer Institute, and the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States were being truthful with their claims of not targeting young people with their advertising. What they found was this was not true. The study was published in the Journal of Adolescent Health.

After comparing 118 print ads,

The researchers found that in magazines with the highest levels of youth readership, youth alcoholic beverage types (e.g., premium beer, low calorie beer, rum, vodka, and flavored alcohol beverages) were more than four times more likely to be advertised than non-youth types (e.g., gin, brandy, whiskey, and scotch). As youth readership increased in a magazine, so did the number of youth alcoholic beverage advertisements.

Despite the claims of the institutes, 42.9% of ads for drinks that appeal to youth were placed in magazines popular with that age group. Only 23.1% of alcohol ads were for drinks that aren’t usually associated with youth.

Underage drinking is something that can cause serious problems, from accidents to binge drinking to alcoholism, so it is a serious issue. However, the “duh” factor was in the finding. It’s very obvious to anyone who the target market is for those younger-style alcoholic beverages – and it’s not grannie.

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Post from: Healthbolt

Alcoholism is not something that is funny nor should it be joked about. It’s a serious problem that requires serious interventions. But who in their right mind doesn’t know or hasn’t figured out that the longer you abuse alcohol, the more alcohol you end up using?

According to an Ohio State University press release about a study that looked at alcoholics and alcohol use,

The findings suggest that older problem drinkers may have developed a tolerance for alcohol and need to drink even more than younger abusers to achieve the effects they seek.

Really?

To be fair though, the study also did find that binge drinking, something usually thought to be associated with young adults, particularly students, is actually quite high among older drinkers.

The researchers looked at people who drank, how much they drank, and activities after drinking, such as driving while intoxicated.

Although it was found that older drinkers are actually fewer than younger ones, they had, not only more binge episodes (five or more drinks per day for men, four for women), they drank more over a week overall.

While this wasn’t mentioned in the study, it is likely that binge drinking or too much alcohol overall would be particularly alarming among seniors, considering the high number of them who take medications, many of which should never be mixed with alcohol.

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Image: PhotoXpress.com

Post from: Healthbolt

I live in Quebec where the legal age is 18, while our neighboring province Ontario’s legal age is 19. At the same time, an hour south of us, across the Canada/United States border, the age is 21. (One thing I can’t figure out is why you can allow an 18-year-old to own a gun, join the army, get married, vote, buy a house, etc, but he or she can’t have a drink?).

Anyway, since there are such differences in beliefs about teens and alcohol, there are on-going studies to see if there are ways to see what may be best overall.

Researchers in the United Kingdom surveyed 9833 teens in North Eastern England, aged 15 to 16 years, about their alcohol consumption. The researchers were looking for information consumption patterns (what they drank, where they drank it, how they got it) and the results of the drinking (violence, for example). The results of their study were published in the open access, on-line journal version of BMC Public Health.

Briefly, the results showed that when drunk:

• 28.8% experienced violence
• 12.5% regretted alcohol-related sexual encounters
• 45.3% reported forgetting things
• 35.8% drinking in public places

However, teens who said their parents supplied them with alcohol had fewer incidents such as those listed above.

If you read the study thoroughly, you’ll see the authors aren’t saying that parents should be offering their teens alcohol. What they are saying is that if teens are exposed to regulated amounts of alcohol once a week or so, the forbidden fruit is no longer that. While they may continue to drink outside the home, their risk of binge drinking and the risk of experiencing the harmful effects of binge drinking are lower than teens who are not allowed to have any alcohol at home.

If you’re a parent of teens, how do you handle alcohol? If your children are young, what do you think you will do? If you’re not a parent, what do you think parents should do?

I’m in the camp of moderate alcohol in the home – and my children are now 18, 20 and 22.

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But even if you don’t have a problem with alcohol, it never hurts to learn more about what alcohol can do to your body and your life.

The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) have created a great interactive website called  ”Rethinking Drinking” that’s definitely worth checking out. Aimed at helping people, especially those between 18 and 30, determine what type of drinker they are and whether they might be at risk of developing a drinking problem.

Rethinking Drinking asks (and answers) the following questions…

• Do you know how much US adults drink – and where you fit in?
• Do you know what counts as a drink?
• Do you know how many drinks are in common containers?
• Do you know why being able to ‘hold your liquor’ is a concern?
• Do you know the signs that alcohol is causing harm?

The site offers some great tools and resources such as the interactive worksheets let you do things like weigh the pros and cons plus calculators that can help you estimate drink sizes, cocktail contents, alcohol calories, alcohol spending, and blood alcohol concentration levels.

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Anyway, Texans may be the toppers, but Midwesterners aren’t far behind. In fact, Midwest towns capture close to half of the top 15 slots. Who else made the list? Check them out here, adapted from a Forbes.com slideshow (complete with awesome photos):

1. Austin, TX

2. Milwaukee, WI

3. San Francisco, CA

4. Providence, RI

5. Chicago, IL

8. Seattle, WA (tie)

8. Cleveland, OH (tie)

8. St. Louis, MO (tie)

9. Boston, MA

10. Cincinnati, OH

11. Pittsburgh, PA

12. Virginia Beach, VA

13. Portland, OR

14. Jacksonville, FL

15. Detroit, MI

Is your city on the list?

For an extremely detailed explanation of how Forbes arrived at these findings, check out the full article.

Bottom’s up!

Post from: Healthbolt