I’m actually surprised that Japanese are perceived as harder drinkers than Americans (and, in fact, #5 overall according to this poll.) I thought the stereotype was that Japanese (and Asians in general) are lightweights.
To je pravda!
(trans: True dat!)
I’m surprised at how many people mention the Chinese. I thought the majority of Chinese couldn’t process alchohol, resulting in itchiness and flushed skin. I’ve known many American Chinese, Koreans, and Vietnamese with this problem.
Now I’m off to google statistics.
I thought the stereotype of the UK, anyway, was sucking down several pints fast, because closing time comes so early. Has Andy Capp been misleading me?
I remember riding the ferry from Denmark to Sweden, with a bunch of Swedes who were each bringing back several cases of booze. Here’s an article on Swedish drinking. The government is concerned about Swedes’ heavy drinking and makes alcohol expensive and somewhat difficult to get, but Denmark’s taxes are much lower.
Maybe they are lightweights, but because they get drunker off less alcohol, they seem like harder drinkers.
I’ve been out drinking with lots of people. The Finns and Swedes are the heaviest drinkers I’ve seen, followed by the Russians. They all consume massive quantities of Vodka. Nobody else is even in the running, not even the Irish who, while they drink a lot, don’t pound hard liquor the way the Finns, Swedes, and Russians do.
True about the Asian alcohol allergy.
Having said this, I can not even count how many Chinese men I know that ignore the irritation and drink anyway.
The UK and the Continent are very different in this regard. The UK has the restrictive licensing laws for decades; the Continental countries did not. Thus the UK now has a serious binge drinking problem, whle the French and Italians will happily sip away all day at a reasonable pace.
Unless they’re hooligans the Brits can’t drink for shit.
Alcohol Consumption (litres per year per person):
Ireland - 13.7
UK - 11.8
Germany - 12.0
France - 11.4
Italy - 8.0
Russia - 10.3
USA - 8.6
Canada - 7.8
China - 5.2
Japan - 7.6
Alcohol Related Deaths (per 10k per year):
Ireland - 654
UK - 504
Germany - 661
France - 702
Italy - 425
Russia - 848
USA - 810
Canada - 796
China - 346
Japan - 333
O yeah…everybody I know has a “I tried to party with the Swedes” story.
What does that study say about those nationalities being able to HOLD their liquor. 
Where are these stats from? The CDC (pdf; see p.11) puts US alcohol-related deaths at 7.0 per 100,000 people (in 2006). And in terms of raw numbers of deaths, those that were alcohol-related made up roughly 23,000 out of 2,250,000 total deaths (in 2006) (compare p.95 and p.18).
I’m sorry my data was DALYs per 100k rather than deaths per 10k. :smack:
It’s a measurement of years of life lost rather than numbers of deaths.
http://www.who.int/entity/healthinfo/statistics/bodgbddeathdalyestimates.xls
They are on here: they’re British (as are Welsh people and Northern Irish).
The Thais apparently have a huge, Europe-comparable per-capita booze consumption rate, so I voted for them under “other”.
My experience of living in the States is that it’s quite binary. The minority, those who drink, they fucking drink, and drank me under the table. The rest would get twatted just from sniffing the lid of a Bud Lite, throw up, and go home early.
Please note for the record:
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Coors Light isn’t beer. It’s soda pop with some alcohol in it.
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American beer drinkers don’t drink Coors Light. People who don’t like beer drink Coors Light.
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Some of the best beers in the world are brewed here in the U.S. Last time I was in Ireland, I didn’t see a single one of them over there.
Visiting places like Ireland, Scotland, and Germany makes me understand why you folks have such disdain for “American beer.” The only American-made beers you ever see on your side of the pond are Budweiser, Coors, and Miller products.
I’m with Gary. Coor’s Light is water with a splash of ale.
My father brought me back a bottle of German beer and it was heavy but good. In a less is more’ sort of way. it was like a meal. The poll looks pretty accurate with the Ireland and Russia being on top.
Different types of alcoholic beverages tend to affect individuals in interesting ways. Since my husband and I are homebrew hobbyists (mead mostly), we’ve definitely had our share of friends over for sampling different brews. Some friends who can handle whisky and rum and other liquors with no problem get absolutely trashed on a small amount of mead, while others can drink mead all night with no issue but get trashed on beer or liquor. Seems that a lot of it has to do with how the person’s body metabolizes the sugars present in the drink. There is, however, a little to be said about a person’s drinking style in relation to how they handle their alcohol; some are sippers, some binge, and some consume food while drinking while others avoid it.
Even sven made a good point about cultural drinking behavior: I learned that sipping one’s alcohol was preferable, for it was okay to be a little tipsy but not okay to be drunk enough to lose one’s eloquence. You can drink a lot of alcohol over the course of an evening without being staggering drunk, and I’ve had many an occasion where I wasn’t staggering, but I was definitely under the effect of quite a few drinks over the course of an evening-- giggling and completely lacking in seriousness, but able to walk/dance/saunter somewhat gracefully where I needed to be. Mind you, by the time I got to that point, I was more prone to prancing about, but I made an effort to not get drunk to the point where I couldn’t handle walking and talking without it being a serious challenge. FTR, my first “real” drinking experience where I ended up drinking all night was when I was 15 and celebrating New Year’s Eve in Reykjavik; we drank enough to be tipsy all night, but nobody got “staggering around and puking” drunk.