Canada Has New Guidelines On How Much Alcohol To Drink That Are Different Than The US & UK
The new guidelines on how many drinks you should have each week are lower than before.
There are new alcohol guidelines in Canada about how much you should drink and the advice is pretty different from the U.S. and U.K.
On January 16, 2023, "Canada's Guidance on Alcohol and Health: Final Report" was released by the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction (CCSA) with the help of a financial contribution from Health Canada.
The report said that having three to six standard drinks per week is "moderate," as it leads to an increased risk of developing different types of cancer.
Alternatively, having one or two standard drinks a week is low risk and having seven or more standard drinks a week is an increasingly higher risk, with an elevated risk of heart disease or stroke.
After that threshold of seven alcoholic beverages, every additional standard drink "radically increases" your risk of alcohol-related consequences, according to the CCSA.
In Canada, a standard drink has 17.05 millilitres or 13.45 grams of pure alcohol and that's the equivalent of:
- A bottle of beer (12 ounces, 341 millilitres, 5% alcohol)
- A bottle of cider (12 ounces, 341 millilitres, 5% alcohol)
- A glass of wine (5 ounces, 142 millilitres, 12% alcohol)
- A shot glass of spirits (1.5 ounces, 43 millilitres, 40% alcohol)
The CCSA said the new weekly number of drinks that outlines the risk zones is close to the weekly recommendations in other countries including the U.K., Australia, Denmark, France and the Netherlands.
Canada used to recommend consuming no more than 15 drinks a week for men and 10 drinks a week for women before the recent changes.
According to the "Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2020-2025" that was released by the U.S. government, men should limit themselves to two alcoholic drinks or less in a day and women should have one drink or less in a day.
That works out to 14 drinks per week for men and seven drinks per week for women.
The U.K.'s alcohol guidelines recommend drinking no more than 14 units of alcohol a week, spread across three or more days which is around six medium glasses of wine or six pints of 4% beer.
A single small shot of spirits (25 millilitres, 40% alcohol) is one unit, a bottle of lager, beer or cider (330 millilitres, 5% alcohol) is 1.7 units and a standard glass of red, white or rosé wine (175 millilitres, 12% alcohol) is 2.1 units in the U.K.
The CCSA has also released guidance on how to drink less which includes counting how many drinks you have in a week, setting a weekly drinking target and making sure you don't have more than two drinks a day.
According to the centre, you can stay on target by drinking slowly, drinking lots of water, having one non-alcoholic drink for every alcoholic drink, choosing alcohol-free or low-alcohol beverages, eating before and while you’re drinking and having alcohol-free weeks.