In the Office thread someone said something about public perception and drinking. I never really thought of America as a “lightweight” country when it came to alcohol.
I mean, we’re not IRISH, but i thought America had a solid reputation for binge drinking if nothing else. I concede the puritantical stance on sexuality. We’re prudes, but can we also not handle our booze?!?
We certainly outrank the french right? spaniards? the japanese? maybe i should start a poll and do a who’s who of drinking nations.
PS, one of my buddies has been living in Moscow for the past two years and he said that even at the top of our college drinking games, we wouldn’t be able to come close to keeping up with Russians.
Lightweight? You guys need to beef up just to get to the level of lightweight.
At the start of a night out here, (or during the day if its an all day thing) I am partial to a few bottles of Coors Light. It easy drank, without getting you too drunk.
So when in New York for a stag do (bachelor party) it seemed only natural to go for the old Coors light. Hey even I would balk at vodka for breakfast every day for a week.
Fast forward through a week and a gazillion bottles of Coors light spread among 19 Irish twenty somethings, and we have had a good time, but strangely none of us really seemed to get too drunk. We weren’t “sober”, but there was no dancing on tables or roaring at the top of our voices like the Manhattan wannabes on St Patricks day. And why was this?
Apparently, according to a rather fine young barmaid in the Irish Times beside Madison square garden, Coors light in the US is 2% volume. 2%!!! Fuck me thats less than the water over here. A light beer in Ireland is 4.5 to 5%. No wonder you lot don’t show the alcoholic volume on the bottles, there is bugger all to show.
The world’s most passionate beer drinkers are the Czechs.
I’m fascinated anyone would think Canadians are heavy drinkers and say Americans are lightweights; Canadians and Americans drink about the same amount of the same stuff. I’d be shocked if Canadians were anywhere near the European average.
You’re wildly misinformed. Believe it or not, a Coors Light (4.2%) has as much or more alcohol than a Guinness (4.1%) A standard American macro beer is around 5% ABV.
The hardest drinking nations I know are generally the Eastern European nations. My parents and my aunts and uncles are all Polish-born and, at a typical family gathering, I would guess the average consumption was probably just over half a fifth of liquor per adult. This is an average, so some of the harder drinking men would finish more than a fifth of vodka each over the course of a night. I personally have done over a fifth of vodka at several family occasions and still remained conscious, but those days are (mostly) behind me. The people I know who can keep up with this level of drinking are generally Eastern European or Irish (or, in one case, a mix of Irish and Polish.)
All Eastern Europeans drink more than Americans. Even the Muslims, as far as I can tell. Oh hey, I have a true story about drinking in Eastern Europe and George W. Bush!
In spring (maybe May?) 2008, when I was still teaching in Bulgaria, George W. Bush did a little swing around Eastern Europe. He came to Bulgaria and…all of us Peace Corps Volunteers got invited to meet him at a reception at the embassy in Sofia. I decided not to go for a number of reasons, but a couple of volunteers in my group - these two guys Alan and Kim - went. Afterward, they were totally gleeful that when they shook hands with Bush, he took one look at them and said “when did Peace Corps Volunteers start drinking so much?” (They claim they weren’t drunk at all at the time.) They laughed and said “When we got to Bulgaria!”
And that was that.
But when I relayed this story to my coworkers, they completely misinterpreted it. The point was: we started drinking so much because life here is so bleak. All my Bulgarian colleagues interpreted it as: we didn’t know how to drink properly until we got here!
They were all very proud, and the secretary at my school, who was a good friend of mine, made me repeat this story on several occasions to other people, she was so tickled that George W. Bush now knows that Bulgarians are the best drinkers in the world.
Don’t know about accuracy, but I picked the 5 most popular answers without looking. I would agree with Mahaloth that the average Chinese business person drinks rice wine like its water. But I’m not so sure that the drinking in China is as widespread as you might think. Looking at Wikipedia, the alcohol consumption per capita is 5.2 liters versus the U.S. 8.6.
Really? I am by no means an expert, but I would have guessed the average Canadian man drinks far more beer than the average American man.
Just a feeling, though. No real data or evidence.
I wonder if my impression is from the urban area, while the total there covers the entire country. If people drink less in the country, that’s a good 1 billion people right there bringing the average down.
I wonder what the levels are like in the modern area of China, where like you said, some of the men there could put back a 750 ml bottle of the strong rice wine(well over 60% alcohol).
That list is somewhat surprising. According to that, US drinks more per capita than Bulgaria, by a decent amount (8.6L to 5.9L). More than Poland, too (at 8.1). And Ukraine (6.1). Really? I would never have guessed that. I’m also surprised that Luxembourg (15.6), Ireland (13.7), and Hungary (13.6) all are harder drinkers than the Russians (10.3). I lived in Hungary for a number of years, and they didn’t seem to be any harder drinkers than the Poles, and certainly didn’t seem to drink as much as the Muscovites. Then again, perhaps there are areas of Russia that balance out the harder drinking areas and bring the country’s numbers down.
One thing the list doesn’t show is alcohol consumption per GDP. European countries earn more so they can spend more on alcohol. Other places that have a larger poor population, China and Russia, might drink less per year than we think but drink more per outing because it’s a special occasion. Also a higher % of their income goes towards alcohol than Americans. The average rural Chinese can’t afford to get wasted every weekend, but they still drink heavier than their American counterparts.
