EDITOR’S BLOG: Recommended Daily Intake

With so much negative press about alcohol these days, it was refreshing to read a frank and funny story about alcohol consumption by journalist and radio personality, Tony Squires. In a story in the Sun Herald’s Sunday magazine Squires comes clean and admits he has, on more than one occasion, exceeded the national alcohol guidelines. There was also a sort-of drinking diary of three other women who had no qualms about smashing the two a day maximum recommendation for women. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for moderation and for looking after yourself but it seems we are headed down a very simplistic and puritanical road at the moment where drinking is bad and abstaining is good. There is, apparently, no in between. So it was nice to see the drinking habits of normal, successful people in print, not just another Roosters player being arrested in Coogee for vile drunken craziness. I enjoy my nightly beer. And that shouldn’t make me a bad person, or a bad mother, or a bad wife. But if the ads on TV are to be believed, I should probably be hiding my beer from my child. By making alcohol such an evil, we are only building its mystique for children. As a culture, it’s time to normalise alcohol consumption, to discourage our kids from binge drinking by promoting the responsible service and sale of alcohol and to look at the deeper issues that lead our kids to binge drink in this fashion.

That leads me to my question. Given the Australian Alcohol Guidelines recommend no more than two drinks a day for healthy men and women and no more than four drinks on a single occasion, how much do you think is too much? And incidentally, how much do you drink? Get posting.