Article for discussion 04/03/13

Level of excess drinking of alcohol 'is underestimated'

COMMENTS (676)

The amount of alcohol consumed in England could be much higher than previously thought, a study suggests.

University College London researchers compared alcohol sales figures with surveys of what people said they drank.

They found there was a significant shortfall with almost half of the alcohol sold unaccounted for in the consumption figures given by drinkers.

This suggests as many as three-quarters of people may be drinking above the recommended daily alcohol limit.

The researchers reached their estimates by factoring in the "missing" alcohol - and found excess drinking was far more than suggested by official figures, they told European Journal of Public Health.

Experts said much alcohol use went unreported, partly because drinkers did not admit or keep track of how much they consumed.

'Health implications'

The study found that 19% more men than previously thought were regularly exceeding their recommend daily limit - and 26% more women.

Total consumption across the week was also higher than officially thought - with 15% more men, and 11% more women drinking above the weekly guidelines.

The current recommendation set by the UK Chief Medical Officers is not to regularly exceed four units per day for men and three units a day for women; the Royal College of Physicians recommends weekly alcohol limits of 21 units for men and 14 units for women - although these are currently under review.

A unit of alcohol is roughly equivalent to half a pint of ordinary strength beer, or nearly one small glass of wine.

Sadie Boniface, lead author of the study at University College, said: "Currently we don't know who consumes almost half of all alcohol in England. This study was conducted to show what alcohol consumption would look like when all of what is sold is accounted for, if everyone under-reported equally.

"The results are putative, but they show that this gap between what is seen in the surveys and sales potentially has enormous implications for public health in England."

The team used alcohol sales data from Revenue and Customs and compared it with two self-reporting alcohol consumption surveys conducted in 2008 - the General Lifestyle Survey (GLF) which analysed average weekly alcohol consumption in 12,490 adults, and the Health Survey for England (HSE) which looked at consumption on the heaviest drinking day in the previous week among 9,608 adults.

Counting units

The researchers say they will now look at the characteristics of those that are under-reporting the number of drinks they have had, and why.

They suggest it may be down to drinking patterns and habits - those that are mixing drinks, and drinking at different venues, may be more likely to under-report.

The charity Alcohol Concern suggests irregular and chaotic drinking behaviour may play a part: "When we're totting up our drinks total we don't always count some occasions as proper drinking.

"We may underestimate drink sizes and their alcoholic content, and not count holidays and special occasions like weddings, birthdays and Christmas when we often drink a great deal more than usual."

The researchers suggest that government drinking guidelines need to reflect actual consumption instead of reported drinking - especially when ascertaining what levels are associated with harm.

The Department of Health says this will be taken into consideration in their alcohol consumption review.

It said: "We already know people underestimate what they drink and many drink too much. That's why we work to help people make healthier decisions, including the recent Change For Life campaign to help them track consumption and understand the impact on their health.

"We're also tackling excessive drinking through our proposed minimum unit price at 45p per unit, tougher licensing laws, more GP risk assessments, better access to specialist nurses and more specialised treatment."

Diane Abbott MP, Labour's shadow public health minister, said: "This has got to be a wake-up call for the government and the country, because after more than two years of bitter internal rows, the government has got cold feet about its only proposed alcohol harm policy.

"More needs to be done to tackle problem drinking, which costs the country £21bn." 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-21586566?print=true

FILM for discussion on 4/3/13

Here is the short film I want to discuss. I would like to discuss the technology portrayed in the film more than the film itself.  Link: http://vimeo.com/46304267

 How close is this 'futuristic' tech? http://www.google.com/glass/start/ 

VERY CLOSE: http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/lifestyle/technology-gadgets/google-cofounder-sergey-brin-previews-glass-29104831.html

Discussion article for Feb. 26th

Why speaking English can make you poor when you retire Could the language we speak skew our financial decision-making, and does the fact that you're reading this in English make you less likely than a Mandarin speaker to save for your old age?

It is a controversial theory which has been given some weight by new findings from a Yale University behavioural economist, Keith Chen.

Prof Chen says his research proves that the grammar of the language we speak affects both our finances and our health.

Bluntly, he says, if you speak English you are likely to save less for your old age, smoke more and get less exercise than if you speak a language like Mandarin, Yoruba or Malay.

Future-speak

Prof Chen divides the world's languages into two groups, depending on how they treat the concept of time.

Strong future-time reference languages (strong FTR) require their speakers to use a different tense when speaking of the future. Weak future-time reference (weak FTR) languages do not.

"If I wanted to explain to an English-speaking colleague why I can't attend a meeting later today, I could not say 'I go to a seminar', English grammar would oblige me to say 'I will go, am going, or have to go to a seminar'.

"If, on the other hand, I were speaking Mandarin, it would be quite natural for me to omit any marker of future time and say 'I go listen seminar' since the context leaves little room for misunderstanding," says Prof Chen.

Even within European languages there are clear grammatical differences in the way they treat future events, he says.

"In English you have to say 'it will rain tomorrow' while in German you can say 'morgen regnet es' - it rains tomorrow."

Disassociating the future

Speakers of languages which only use the present tense when dealing with the future are likely to save more money than those who speak languages which require the use a future tense, he argues.

So how does a mere difference in grammar cause people to save less for their retirement?

"The act of savings is fundamentally about understanding that your future self - the person you're saving for - is in some sense equivalent to your present self," Prof Chen told the BBC's Business Daily.

"If your language separates the future and the present in its grammar that seems to lead you to slightly disassociate the future from the present every time you speak.

"That effectively makes it harder for you to save."

Even more controversial, is Prof Chen's assertion that language differences underpin wider differences in people's behaviour.

In his research paper, he says that compared to speakers of languages which use a future tense, speakers of languages with no real future tense are:

• Likely to have saved 39% more by the time they retire
• 31% more likely to save in a year
• 24% less likely to smoke
• 29% more likely to be physically active
• 13% less likely to be obese

Far-fetched?

Not surprisingly, Prof Chen's findings have been criticised by both economists and linguists.

They argue there are number of cultural, social, or economic reasons why different language speakers behave differently.

It is a point Prof Chen acknowledges, saying "I completely agree, it seemed far-fetched to me when I started doing this research as well."

But he says his research has controlled for all these factors, by concentrating on nine multi-lingual countries: Belgium, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Estonia, DR Congo, Nigeria, Malaysia, Singapore, and Switzerland.

"You can find families that live right next door to each other, have exactly the same education levels, exactly the same income and even exactly same religion.

"Yet the family that speaks a language that doesn't distinguish between the future and the present will save dramatically more," he says.

In Nigeria, for example, Hausa has multiple future tenses, while Yoruba does not.

"You can find Nigerians who speak Hausa and Yoruba who live next to each other and yet have radically different savings behaviour."

Findings challenged

But Morten Lau, director of Durham University's Centre for Behavioural Economics, says the factors which affect how much people save have little to do with language.

"In my own work with savings, it is interest rates that determine savings behaviour."

Prof Lau says there are often significant differences within language groups, and just using the average of these results in analysis can prove problematic.

"You have to be careful the inferences you make from correlations like these. It is very difficult to control for multiple factors."

"For instance, in our own research in Denmark, we found that male smokers wanted a higher interest rate on their savings than did non-smokers. But that this did not apply to women smokers."

'A tempting idea'

Linguist John McWhorter, of Columbia University, says any influence a language's structure has on the way its speakers see their world is extremely subtle.

"The extent to which the language shapes the thought is tiny. We're talking about milliseconds of reaction.

"None of it has ever been proven to have anything to do with how people see the world or experience life.

"It's a tempting idea that simply doesn't make any sense."

Also, he says, some languages have been wrongly classified, thus undermining the statistical correlations.

"Russian, and languages like it, are a lot more like Mandarin than Keith Chen thinks."

Despite his critics, Prof Chen insists his findings are robust.

"What's remarkable, is when you find correlations this strong and that survive so many aggressive sets of controls, it's actually hard to come up with a story of what else might be causing this."

So what does Prof Chen think of the idea that if he is right, then English speakers who want to start saving more for their retirement, should talking entirely in the present tense?

"It actually seems like encouraging yourself to think in the present tense makes it a little bit easier to engage in self-control."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-21518574