Average drinker’s 150 wine bottles a year

THE average drinker now downs more than 150 bottles of wine each year, a top doctor has warned.

He has also said that more than 1,000 deaths a year can be attributed to alcohol, with drink involved in half of all suicides.

Professor Frank Murray, a liver specialist at Beaumont Hospital in Dublin, said: ‘Alcohol is no ordinary commodity. It is an addictive substance that causes three deaths per day here in Ireland so we need to treat it quite differently.

‘The average consumption by a drinker of alcohol is more than 150 bottles of wine per year. Most alcohol is now consumed at home. Women are drinking very heavily as well as men drinking heavily.’

Professor Murray added: ‘When I was a trainee 30 years ago we mainly saw men drinking in pubs coming in with liver failure.

‘Now we are seeing much younger people and both men and women presenting with irreversible liver failure due to alcohol.

‘I think the idea that alcohol is part of our national consciousness and national identity is something that has been cleverly played upon by the alcohol industry.’

The professor’s grim warning comes in the final episode of the current series of RTÉ One TV show, What Are You Eating?, which will be broadcast this week.

The programme reveals that between 60% and 70% of cirrhosis of the liver cases come from alcohol abuse and that excessive drinking is also linked to throat, breast and intestinal cancer.

It is also a cause of obesity with four pints of beer having the same calories as a pizza.

Presenter Philip Boucher-Hayes reveals that one bottle of beer is like having half a bag of chips, one alcopop is equivalent to eating a doughnut, or 190 calories, and that a small glass of spirits is similar to having two dessert spoons of cream.

A standard bottle of wine contains 550 calories, more than a quarter of a woman’s recommended 2,000 calories a day.

The broadcaster also shows how easy it is to make alcohol by creating his own gin at the Listoke Gin School using crab apples, plums, ginger and pine needles.

He also looks into Ireland’s love affair with the barbecue – and with eating fast food on our way home from the pub.

What Are You Eating? will be broadcast on RTÉ One this Wednesday at 8.30pm