The fact that wine and beer bottles are exempt from those Nutrition Facts labels is utter nonsense.
If people knew how much sugar and calories are in their drink maybe they would think twice
I was drinking a while claw with my mother-in-law, and reflected that 100 calories was pretty good.
She responded she preferred her normal vodka sodas because they have 0 calories…
Honestly I wouldn’t know if I didn’t have to take nutrition 101 in college.
Actually who am I kidding if I didn’t know I probably would’ve googled it.
There are nutrition labels on alcohol in Europe, but people there drink as much as here.
Europe drinks way more alcohol than North America
Excerpt from the article:
If you feel that Europeans drink a lot, your hunch is correct: people across the continent consume more alcohol than in any other part of the world. Each year in Europe, every person aged 15 and over consumes, on average, 9.5 litres of pure alcohol, which is equivalent to around 190 litres of beer, 80 litres of wine or 24 litres of spirits. That’s according to the 2021 European health report by the World Health Organization (WHO).
24 litres of spirits is about 4 bottles of whiskey or vodka every 3 weeks.
That does seem like a lot to me.
True, one of my neighbour drank 1 bottle of wine at diner and 1 at supper, he died of cirrhosis of liver at around 60 though.
Yup, just checked my beer. Lists ingredients and calories. In 2 langauges!
The cans of beer that I buy have ingredients and nutrition info like a soda can does.
Haven’t seen any on liquor bottles though.
I don’t have any liquor bottles, but my wine bottles have ingredients info, but no nutrition info.
Depends on from where they were sourced.
My Itallian red wine has nutritional info, French sourced white wine has nutritional info, American sourced red wine has nothing.
A short search states that the US doesnt have to have labels on alcohol because it’s not regulated by the FDA.
In Canada beer alcohol isn’t required to have nutritional info.
The fact that wine and beer bottles are exempt from those Nutrition Facts labels is utter nonsense.
I did not know that. That is nuts.
Not having to list ingredients is a real pain if you have uncommon food allergies.
Alcohol is required to list ingredients and allergy information.
But then when you do see the nutrition label, it ends up acting as an ad that it’s a healthier drink.
This I fully agree with, and have no idea why they are currently exempted but assume lobbying.
Meanwhile cannabis beverages are required to have:
-Nutrition facts including calories, sugar, etc.
-Gigantic yellow warning with random health warning (e.g., don’t use if pregnant)
-Huge red stop sign cannabis leaf logo
-KEEP OUT OF REACH OF CHILDREN
-Big pain in the ass plastic childproof thing
None of these required on a can of beer.
From a harm reduction perspective, it’s a massive failure. Many cannabis beverages have very low nearly zero calories, sugar-free. For your physical health they are almost certainly less harmful than alcohol and I know many people would enjoy them as an alternative to alcohol.
We have faced a similar failure in harm reduction strategy regarding vaping versus tobacco. I think in both cases it’s a result of vested interests (tax revenue, lobbying, don’t know) trumping what is best for people.
The way Canada has handled cannabis legalization is embarrassing.
We’re still ahead of the people who haven’t legalised it or even criminalise it, though.
That’s not something to be proud of. Just because someone does it worse doesn’t mean you should be proud of how it’s done.
Yeah, I’m not saying we should rest on our laurels.
It seems good to me. If people want it they can get it now.
That was always true though. The difference now is consistency
Yeah federally across the whole country? Sounds terrible.
If you simplify anything that much it seems like a great idea. You obviously don’t know much about the Cannabis Act.
Oooooobviously
To who? Because we’re still the only country with it fully legalized for recreational use. I fail to see how that’s embarrassing at all.
We used to have weird rules on alcohol too, and just like those, cannabis rules have been getting better as time has gone on. You can’t expect a world first system to be perfect right out of the gate.
This is what happens when you have a large segment of the population that is both opposed to something, and not terribly against acting in bad faith. You get poison pills in your regulations.
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Taxes are too high, rules for storage actively ruin the products. It really didn’t do much to stop illicit sales; most people I know that didn’t start smoking when it became illegal never buy from the dispensary. They did a terrible job of handing out liscensing, and most of the people who got them were just rich people making an investment(and lots of them had previously supported prohibition because they are also involved in alcohol sales) instead of working with non violent offenders to help them transition. And the edibles and drinkables people are talking about are so bad because the government made arbitrary THC limits.
Presumably he means that Canada didn’t handle it, aside from lifting the prohibition, as it is a provincial matter.
Health Canada has also made some ridiculous limitations. They are the reason all the warning labels have to be on everything, and why packaging is so bad that it ruins the buds. They also established some very restrictive rules regarding edibles and extracts. A 10mg limit for edibles is crazy and one of the big reasons that black market edibles are so popular.
Cannabis, unlike alcohol and tobacco, has a high chance of causing long term and devastating effects on youth. This is a fact proven by science. Ease of access to alcohol should be heavily reduced and warnings should be places on them, Conservative ran alcohol lobbies always block that idea.
Vaping has been scientifically proven to be just as bad, if not worse for you health not to mention the negative environmental factor. It should follow the same path as tobaccos; no branding, no labels, health warning, removal of flavors, fines for vaping in public spaces.
Because it would be weird reading that smoking alcohol is dangerous for pregnant women.
This damn nanny state is out of control! /s
Because alchol sellers aren’t widely considered as flat out evil as cigarette makers, meaning that they can still realistically grease the wheels of power with dump trucks full of money.
I’m sure cigarette makers would love to the do the same thing, but no politician is dumb enough to risk taking “campaign contributions” from people who are widely considered to be the scum of the earth. Alcohol makers still have a level of respectability that lets them get away with it.
no politician is dumb enough to risk taking “campaign contributions” from people who are widely considered to be the scum of the earth.
And yet they’ll accept campaign assistance from foreign and domestic oil companies:
I can think of local brewers and stuff that do it as a hobby, and just happened to take a chance to start doing it professionally. I don’t think these people are evil at all, they’re just trying to have fun with their interest (albeit one that isn’t great for your health) and make some money while doing so.
Can’t really say the same thing for tobacco. I’m sure in some places there may be a similar kind thing though, so that’s just a thought from my local perspective. All I know are big corporate brands for smoking.
Edit: just to add onto this… I absolutely think we should include ingredients, nutritional facts, and warnings on alcohol still. Just my 2 cents about one being more evil than the other by a landslide.
Very true. I was just comparing corporations to corporations. Craft breweries are certainly not evil; they’re the equivalent of local businesses for the most part.
IMO charging $16 a glass for another IPA with the same 3 hops that are in every IPA is pretty evil.
Economists: The high price is meant to scare you away.
Lemmy users: $16 and the same as every other IPA? Pour me another!
Bro it’s artisanal
Lobbying
I mean, aren’t the cigarette companies famous for being extreme lobbyists?
They moved to vape stuff.
Because it would hurt sales. Duh!
Dooo it. They’ll be a bit more tame, though, because moderate drinking is not nearly as deadly as smoking.
Why are you so confident to say that? I think alcohol is probably worse than cigarettes
I mean I could be wrong. The sense I’ve gotten is that a couple drinks is maybe on the same tier as a greasy meal.
Alcohol affects every organ in your body and is one of the only things where withdrawal can kill you
I just searched around a bit, and it seems surprisingly hard to find actual numbers for each separately. Do you have any? Life expectancy reduction would probably be the best measure.
I wholly agree with the author of this article, but implementing something like this will meet a lot of resistance. Let’s not forget that cigarettes are a relatively new phenomenon, whereas alcohol is something we’ve consumed as a species since prehistoric times. There are a lot of cultural, social, and historical ties to the use of alcohol that people won’t let go easily and will make any attempt to reduce alcohol consumption an uphill battle.
Don’t forget sugar too!
No one recreationally smokes the same way that people might drink every once in a while.
You also have a lot of money spent by various alcohol manufacturers to keep alcohol from being treated like tobacco. If anything, drinking went up a lot with millennials.
I know quite a few people who only smoke on the rare occasions they have a drink.
I was not one of them.
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I always thought the hypocrisy between alcohol and cannabis packaging is ridiculous. If cigarettes and cannabis need to be heavily restricted in terms of having simple, plain packaging with health warnings, anything for sale that can cause health issues should be subject to the same restrictions.
Everything will eventually cause health issues. Some substances are quicker to the punch than others, though. To avoid label fatigue, there is merit in limiting use to the worst offenders.
It has only been in the last few years that we are starting recognizing a greater danger in alcohol than earlier realized. And, indeed, Health Canada labelling requirements for alcohol have become more stringent in that time. As we learn more, it is likely the labelling requirements will continue to evolve as well.
The answer is in the article: “ I don’t want to say that there are necessarily equivalent health risks,”
I would argue the overwhelming majority of consumers do not know alcohol is a proven carcinogen, and many would still choose to make more health conscious choices, even though the relative risk is lower than smoking.
While alcohol is a carcinogen, it only accounts for something like 3% of cancers deaths, mostly paired with liver disease. Hell, breathing air in a city causes more cancer deaths than alcohol.
This whole article reads like a modern temperance movement, trying to stamp out vice by comparing one harm to another, despite how different the harms are.
We know the harms of alcohol, they are different than the harms of tobacco. They should not be regulated the same. This article misses that completely.
Being a carcinogen is alcohols minor side effect. Don’t forget alcohol poisoning and the damage it does to families and relationships due to alcoholism, and another biggie, driving under the influence.
He clearly didn’t forget, unless you think tobacco also carries the same family and relationship damage and driving under the influence problems?
Yes
We know the harms of alcohol, they are different than the harms of tobacco. They should not be regulated the same. This article misses that completely.
I just didn’t list out the harms of alcohol, or how they’re regulated, because I thought everyone knew.
The list of proven and likely carcinogens is rather large. Do we put a similar health warning on every sausage and strip of bacon? Plus planks of wood (wood dust contains known carcinogen). If you extend the list to mutagens, rather than proven carciogens the list gets even longer
Not really equivalent. Smoking permanently leaves all kind of nasty shit in your lungs and causes cancer. Also very addictive, making moderation physically difficult (alcohol can also be addictive but not to the same extremes). Alcohol in moderation isn’t really an issue. Pushing it more can give your liver a bad time, but as long as you give it a break before the point of disease it can bounce right back.
There is a societal problem especially in the UK in that it’s seen as a sort of matter of pride to throw moderation out of the window and get as wasted as possible, but I have my doubts that graphic health warnings will do much about that. Either way it’s more an effect of society ignoring and sometimes even shaming moderation (how many times have you been shamed for going home before you fall over on a work’s night out) than the alcohol itself.
Because those health warnings are meaningless to begin with. We know it’s bad for us, we don’t need a nanny state to hold our hands at the same time.
We know it’s bad for us
You have the knowledge in the back of your mind. The warnings make you have it in active thought.
we don’t need a nanny state
Do you truly believe consumers usually/always make rational and reasonable decisions, that don’t go against their own interests?
You have the knowledge in the back of your mind. The warnings make you have it in active thought.
What kind of manipulative power trip behavior control bullshit logic is this?
Do you truly believe consumers usually/always make rational and reasonable decisions, that don’t go against their own interests?
Who the fuck cares? I decide how I live my life. If you want to wear bubble wrap and consume nothing but distilled water and unflavored soy bean paste so you can totally live forever and never need medical treatment, have at.
I’d rather live.
How would warnings stop you from that? It’s informative text, it can’t hurt you. Not any more than the alcohol itself.
I would rather my government spend my tax dollars solving real problems, not creating hoops for companies to jump through so people can ignore them (which is your narrative, in reality, it is intended to stagmatize the product and the people who consume the product and try to shame them into stopping).
sounds like regulatory capture to me: increase the bar to establish a brand so that only established brands dominate the market place. laws are bad and there should only be fewer of them.
…how does that apply to labels
if I only needed to scrawl an abv and my signature on my wine before, and now I need a printed label, my cost increases.
It can be really easy to change what’s on a label, to be honest. Just set everything up with some time buffer, and there won’t be any disruptions.
I’ll never understand why more information is bad. I’m sure some people with allergies would love to easily know what’s in booze before they buy/drink it.
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