Want to drink less? Choose RED wine in a THIN glass

And stick to quiet pubs! Quirky tips to help reduce your intake

HAVING got through the festive season of over- indulgence many of us may feel we want to cut back on the booze. This makes sense — the health pitfalls of excess drinking are extensive. It can have a detrimental effect on everything from blood pressure to cancer risk, memory and weight — last week experts suggested that many people don’t even realise how calorific alcohol can be, and said labels should carry a calorie count.

The need to limit alcohol will be underlined this week with the Government’s new advice on how much people should cut back on drinking. This i s expected to reduce the current maximum recommended intakes of alcohol — 2-3 units a day for women and 3-4 units for men.

Some of us choose to go dry for the whole of January, but if you wish to opt for moderation instead, here are some sustainable and scientifically backed strategies to help cut your drinking by stealth.

Order your pint in a straight-sided glass

The shape of your glass can have a huge subliminal influence on how little or how much you drink.

In 2012, psychologists at Bristol University discovered that curvy-sided beer glasses can make you drink excessively fast.

The study in the journal PLOS ONe, found that people drank almost 60 per cent more slowly when their beer was served in a straight glass.

One of the main reasons for this appears to be something called the ‘vertical-horizontal optical illusion’. People see equally sized vertical lines as longer than curved or horizontal ones. So drinkers think that there is more beer in a straight glass, and consume it more slowly because each sip seems ‘bigger’.

A tall, thin glass is better than a tumbler

A SIMILAR optical illusion means that you should also use straight, tall glasses for drinking shorts. An analysis of drinking habits in the British Medical Journal in 2005 reveals people pour more into squat tumblers, thinking that tall glasses hold more.

even professional bartenders unintentionally pour up to a third more liquor into short glasses than into tall, thin ones, according to the study by Brian Wansink, a professor of nutrition and marketing at Cornell University, New York.

‘education, practice, concentration and experience don’t correct the overpouring,’ says Professor Wansink. ‘People generally estimate tall glasses as holding more liquid than wide ones. They also focus attention on the height of the liquid they are pouring and insufficiently compensate for its width.’

If you’re accompanying alcohol with nonalcoholic drinks, keep the tumblers for the booze-free beverages, so that you drink more from them.

And with home drinking, invest in a spirit measure. As the charity Drinkaware says: ‘Normal pub measures are 25ml, which doesn’t look a lot in a glass. At home you’re likely to lose track of how much goes in the glass.’

Put a glass on the table before you pour

SeVeRAL studies have shown that we give ourselves larger servings of wine when we hold the glass while pouring.

A study of 73 volunteers in 2013 by scientists from Iowa State and Cornell Universities, for example, has shown that people drink 12.2 per cent more wine if they hold the glass while pouring, compared to when they fill a glass on a table.

The reason for this is that you are more likely to view the glass from the top when holding it in your hand. When it is on a table, it is easier to see it from the side and how the glass is filling up.

Researchers have found that we can prevent over-pouring with the simple strategy of only ever filling wine glasses half-full — an easy proportion for us to estimate. A report in The International Journal on Drug Policy says that when people stick to this, they drink 20 per cent less in an evening.

Choose ‘dark’ drinks

YeT another optical illusion bamboozles us when we pour white wine or spirits into a glass. As the drinks are clear, like the glass, it doesn’t look like much liquid is going in. People tend to pour around 10 per cent less alcohol into a glass if the drink is coloured, such as red wine, according to a study by Iowa State University in the journal Substance Use & Misuse, in 2013.

Keep beer hidden

If YOU’Ve got a stock of alcohol at home, keep most of it out of the fridge or drinks cabinet, and store it at the back of a cupboard instead.

This create san illusion of scarcity that will encourage you to mete out the booze sparingly. Professor Wansink at Cornell University recommends keeping only two beers in the fridge at a time, for example, rather than the whole six-pack. The rest should stay unappealingly warm and out of the reach.

Drinking one can of beer will then feel like drinking half of your supply. ‘The more you can hamper raw convenience, the more likely you are to curb mindless drinking,’ explains Professor Wansink.

Stick to pubs without music

A STUDY by psychologists at the University of Portsmouth has found that l oud music in bars makes women prone to drinking faster.

It doesn’t matter whether the music is fast or slow, it makes women drink more than they think, and gets them more intoxicated than they believe they are, according to the study published in the journal experimental and Clinical Psychopharmacology in 2013.

Researcher hannah Dodd says that the loud music is an uplifting stimulant on women, which masks the effects of the alcohol.

‘ This may l ead to a f alse appreciation of alcohol strength being lower than it actually is, and induce faster consumption,’ she explains.

A simpler explanation came from an earlier study of people in noisy bars by french psychologists published in the journal Alcoholism: Cli ni cal And experimental Research in 2008.

They said that in loud pubs, people may not be able to hear each other speak, so they drink instead.

Play pool, then go straight home

If YOU’Re in a bar with friends, but are trying to avoid drinking too much, then playing games such as pool or table football may seem like a great distraction.

It does work, but only if you leave straight after the games have ended, according to Dutch researchers writing in the journal Addictive Behaviors.

The psychologists from Radboud University in Nijmegen reported in 2007 that men who have been playing pub games drink more quickly once the gaming is over.

They seem subliminally to be driven to make up f or ‘ l ost’ drinking time, the report says.

Drink from a smaller wine glass

BIG wine glasses can fool us into drinking too much — even when we only order sensible measures, according to a new study.

Theresa Marteau, of t he Cambridge University study published by the journal PLOS ONe in December, asked bar staff to swap smaller glasses for larger ones, but the staff still only served 175ml servings of wine in them.

Professor Marteau found that people were more likely to order another drink and consume nearly 10 per cent more wine over an evening when it is served to them in larger glasses.

‘It seems to make people think, “That wasn’t a full glass, so I’ll have another,” ’ she explains.

So stick to a small glass and save the large red wine glasses for special days.

Keep a drink diary

ReCORD everything you drink at pubs and parties.

The University of California’s Alcohol Research Group reports that people who do this consume less t han t hose who don’t keep track.

Or use alcohol tracking app Drinkaware to record your consumption and discover its effect on health, weight and wealth!