How to keep a lid on your drinking

To try and find out, I went along to Digest Towers and asked  20 willing victims to pour what they thought was a standard 125ml measure of wine—a small glass in a pub. Only two Digesters were spot on, and 55 per cent were over—in some cases way over.

Step forward the 33-year-old male employee who poured a generous 190ml, saying, “I could easily polish off a bottle of that!” Or the female executive in her fifties who was horrified to learn that her “standard” glass measured 175ml and was the equivalent of 2.1 units if the wine was 12% alcohol by volume. (A lot of wines are more than that.) “My God,” she said. “That’s what I’d pour at home!”

In a Reader’s Digest spot survey, only 10% of people accurately poured a 125ml glass of wine

Lots of people blamed the size of the glass but, hey, we all drink from big glasses now—and some bars serve a 250ml glass as standard. That’s a third of a bottle, and a full three units at 12%. When you consider that drinking more than two units a day raises your risk of a host of nasties—including liver damage, cancer, obesity, osteoporosis and cardiovascular disease—it’s enough to make you cancel Christmas. But if you don’t want to do that, try to make sure you alternate your glass of wine with a glass of water—and don’t allow people to top up your glass at parties!  

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