Most of us in higher education are struggling to understand the remarkable level of alcohol consumption evidenced by our students. One of my clicker questions this past quarter, in conjunction with a discussion of how the brain protects us from toxins, asked how many students had vomited from drinking alcohol. The answer? A whopping 60 percent. Not only that, but my students frequently relate that this behavior begins in high school, if not in middle school, leading to the perennial question, “Where are the parents?” Perhaps the parents think vomiting after drinking is normal, too?
Leaving aside the obvious health risks from this behavior, including a disruption of white matter development, it occurred to me that all of this drinking might have something to do with our current obesity epidemic. After all, alcohol is not exactly calorie-free. So I did a little statistical snooping, and found the following table:
Per capital alcohol consumption by year and country
Apparently, Americans do not appear to be increasing their per capita alcohol consumption, but in fact are doing quite the opposite. Alcohol consumption appears to have peaked in 1980, and has decreased since then. In addition, Americans seem to drink less than residents of many countries, such as Italy and Ireland, but quite a bit more than most of the Scandinavian countries. Maybe the Scandinavians are drinking coffee instead like me….
Per capita statistics do not always tell the whole story, however. Studying the impact of alcohol on weight appears to be quite a tricky business. For one thing, people often eat snacks while drinking, which is going to add weight. On another, many heavy drinkers smoke tobacco, which will reduce weight. Then there is the difference between binge drinking one day per week versus having one drink most days in a week….But the end result is that the data do not appear to support a strong role in the obesity epidemic for alcohol, although I remain unconvinced that my students are acting in their best interests when they constantly binge drink.
1 Comment
hpetersen · November 8, 2009 at 7:51 pm
I think that this lack of support is probably pretty accurate. While I would expect a correlation between people who binge drink and obesity rates, I think that obesity has so many factors that contribute to it that narrowing one aspect of it wouldn’t produce significant results. In comparison with day-to-day diet, exercise levels, etc., I would think that alcohol would have less of an impact. Also, we have to take into account that obesity rates as a whole include minors and people who don’t drink. Personally, I think it would be a much more interesting and telling correlation between people who admitt to binge drinking and weight gain.
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