 What we drink is always of interest to people in the UK. Whether it be alcoholic or otherwise we want to find out about new drinks, respond to new fashions and trends, and try out anything that might be good for us as we attempt to have healthier lifestyles!
Very much in fashion at the moment are smoothies and juices. In any supermarket you can find rows of smoothies and many different kinds of fruit juices to tempt your palate. Bookshops are full of books devoted to ‘super juices’ that will ‘turbo-charge your life in just 14 days’ and ‘the best 50 smoothies’, and juicers dominate the sales of kitchen gadgets.
Although the trend towards juices and smoothies started in the health conscious 1990s it seems to have reached a saturation point in the last couple of years. This is particularly true of the availability of some of the more exotic juices such as kiwi and passion fruit which now seem to outnumber the bog-standard orange and apple juices.
However, it seems as if the British are getting a bit too carried away with their juices thinking that just by drinking them we are magically answering all our unhealthy lifestyle problems. Figures published in January showed that Britain consumes 2.2 billion litres of juice drinks a year – this is about 36 litres for every man, woman and child!
It’s not just fruit juices that are promoted as being a reasonably healthy thing to drink though. For those of us who like a pint or two down the pub there now comes the news that beer is less fattening than wine. Wine is usually a more popular drink for women than beer, perhaps because we think it has fewer calories than beer.
Just 14% of women drink beer in pubs compared to the 36% who drink wine. In the UK wine is fast becoming the choice drink among men and women along with fashionable cocktails. ‘It’s a trend I have noticed on nights out and I think it’s been helped along by ‘Happy Hour’ prices where bottles of wine are £5 or £6 so more affordable.’ Louise, Manchester.
A new campaign called ‘Beautiful beer’ is trying to change this statistic by setting the record straight about the calorific content of beer in order to woo women drinkers. As a twenty something that likes to socialise, and who is also body conscious, anything to do with dieting, interests me. I don’t like depriving myself of things I like so the possibility that beer is lass fattening than wine is good news!
The British Beer and Pub Association (BBPA) have released the following figures to support their claims.
Calories per 100ml
Beer (4.6% alc): 41 calories
Wine (12% alc): 77 calories
Spirits: 250 calories
Milk: 64 calories
Orange juice: 42 calories
Apple juice: 47 calories
Whether it be smoothies or beer – or both – drinks are often sold to us as part of a healthy lifestyle we are meant to be aspiring to. However, both have other issues attached. Whether it be relying on smoothies to provide all the nutrients we should be getting from fruit and vegetables, or overindulging in the lifestyle attached to beer drinking which can affect what and how much you eat - think of all the take-aways consumed on Friday and Saturday nights!).
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