Conservatives want to abolish alcohol units system

Rich_L said:
Thats a product of, as has been mentioned, the poor labelling by the drinks industry.

If 100% of products had a 'unit' rating on, then there wouldn't be an argument, because it'd be right there.

Likewise, if only 50% of products have a 'cl of alcohol' on, there will still be arguments over how many cl are in a drink.
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Not as much, because all drinks must have volume percentage printed, else they will have their brewers license revoked, and must print total volume of drink, else they can't trade. So after some maths the argument will be solved. The argument of "How much is a unit?!" can go on all night (I've seen it do this) :p
 
Dj_Jestar said:
You've contradicted yourself.. if you really understand the units system, then you'll know it is *directly* linked to the volume content as 1 unit = 1 centiliter. :/
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In that case, why change the name? I don't believe that people understand units of volume any better than they do arbitrary units.

All this will do is lead to costs for producers in changing their packaging, and nothing will change in terms of people getting drunk and doing stupid stuff.
 
Dj_Jestar said:
If you are implying that simply working out the exact volume of alcohol in a drink by calculating the volume from it's percentage is as easy as just having the volume of alcohol shown on the label then.. well, you can work out the rest.
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Err no, that 5% is an easier to understand representation of how much alcohol there is in relation to other liquid as opposed to 16.5ml in a 330ml drink.



Seriously you honestly think it;s easier to tell the proportionate amount of alcohol from 16.5ml in 330ml.

Than just 5%...

:confused:
 
I think it should all be in ml, I'm sure I read in this very thread how much a unit was, but I still cannot remember.

Why create new non-descript measurement units when we already have good old metric?
 
Tefal said:
Err no, that 5% is an easier to understand representation of how much alcohol there is in relation to other liquid as opposed to 16.5ml in a 330ml drink.



Seriously you honestly think it;s easier to tell the proportionate amount of alcohol from 16.5ml in 330ml.

Than just 5%...

:confused:
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No, I'm advocating both ;) What about someone who is watching how much they drink, and don't want to drink more than 2cl of alcohol? They must calculate percentages every time? Or just add up a number?
 
Erm lots of botles of WKD, calrsberg etc all say


1 unit

then somewhere else (usually on the neck label)

1 unit = 10ml.
 
vonhelmet said:
In that case, why change the name? I don't believe that people understand units of volume any better than they do arbitrary units.

All this will do is lead to costs for producers in changing their packaging, and nothing will change in terms of people getting drunk and doing stupid stuff.
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To end the confusion of "how much is a unit?".
 
No one understands ml of alcohol anyway!

It's not like you look at a can of cider and think "ooh 2 units/20ml, this will a) make me wobble by up to 2 degrees from the vertical b) make me 3% happier and c) make me 5% more likely to ask that girl out".

The measurement is arbitrary. It's the association of how that affects you that is important, which is what dirtydog has been saying.
 
Tefal said:
why not just do it in ml then?
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People would say 'how much is a ml' - meaning, how drunk will x amount of ml make me.

Maybe units isn't the best system, maybe it is. If we were starting from scratch it might be different, but as we've had this system for many years now, I think that it would be wrong to change it for no good reason, and I'm not seeing one.

Make alcohol labelling uniform and mandatory and combine with increased public awareness and education.
 
dirtydog said:
And it would just change to 'how much is a centilitre'.
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100ml, or 1 tenth of a litre. End of discussion.

Instead of:
"Nah, my mate barry said 2 pints is one unit."
"You're having a laugh; my postie told me 1 pint is 4 units."
"Don't be silly Errol, it depends what you are drinking. 5 pints of Carling is one unit!"
"Gotcha mate, right.. time to drive the kids home!"
 
I personally think it is a good idea. For a start it could lead to much more accurate labeling (It would have to be made mandatory as well, with a board up in pubs/clubs too) and using standard measurements is a better idea just in principle.

It might also get away from the completely made up "safe weekly units" number but probably not.
 
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