We Are Going To Drink 4,000 Calories in Alcohol Over Christmas

Over the festive season we'll drink an average of 62 units each. That's 30 glasses of wine. Or 22 pints of beer if you'd prefer. Which doens't sound too bad until you realise that that's 4,000 calories.

And that's without all the chocolate, canapes, sweets and mince pies.

It would take seven hours of continuous jogging to burn off these calories, but hands up who's going to be doing exactly zero hours of strenuous activity over the Christmas period?

And to be honest, this average seems even a little low to us. If you've got a few Christmas meet ups planned, the office Christmas party and, of course, the day itself, and if you enjoy a tipple, there's a good chance this is a very conservative estimate.

Anthony Newman, director of marketing at Cancer Research UK, said: "All the socialising during this time could result in us Brits consuming far more calories than we realise through alcohol alone as it's sometimes difficult to know the exact calorie content of what we are drinking."

A pint, for example, is the same calorie-wise as a chocolate cake, but while we'd happily sup through six pints at the Christmas party, we would never sit down and much an entire chocolate cake in one sitting.

Translating drinks to food can be very revealing.

It may not seem a big deal, after all it's Christmas right?

But it's estimated that the weight we put on at Christmas takes us and average of two months to lose - if we ever do. Not to mention the effect on our poor livers.

In the UK deaths from alcohol-related illnesses are up 500 per cent fron the 1970s and along with Finland, we're the only country in the developed world that is seeing a rise in liver disease.

And it's not just spirits and binge drinking that's to blame. The middle classes reliance on a (few) big glass(es) or wine in the evening has been called out by a leading health official.

Public Health England chief Duncan Selbie warned that liver disease is a 'silent killer' and even one glass of wine is 'like having three shots of vodka'. But that people pouring themselves a big glass after work don't have a clue how much they're actually drinking.

The research by Cancer Research UK comes ahead of its Dryathlon drive, aiming to encourage people to give up alcohol for January and be sponsored to raise money to beat cancer.

[Alcohol Calories As Food]
[Reduced Alcoholic Wines: The Lowdown]