What a great feeling it is when a study by actual scientists comes along and validates something that you’ve been saying for years. Researchers from the behaviour and health research unit at the University of Cambridge (heard of it?!) have recommended that the traditional British pint be abandoned in favour of the two-thirds measure.
After a trial in a dozen pubs, bars and restaurants in England, the study leader, Prof Theresa Marteau, concluded that the change – which led to nearly 10% less beer being sold and consumed – could reduce the impact of alcohol-related harm.
I’m entirely in favour of the idea, but only partly because of the potential benefits to population health. Ever since I moved to the UK in 2017, I’ve felt that the British pint is simply too big to comfortably enjoy. Even if you sip slowly, by the time you reach the bottom, you’re inevitably left feeling sluggish and bloated because of the vast quantity of liquid you’ve consumed.
It’s unwieldy to transport from the bar to the table and the final third is always warm, even if it wasn’t served that way to start with. Then, if you’re locked into a round, you’re obliged to do it all over again.
It’s no wonder Britain has a problem with alcohol: every time you agree to a quick pint – which, let’s be honest, normally ends up as at least two – you’re committing yourself to imbibing more than a litre of the stuff.
Of course, you could always get a half, as one friend suggests. She recently switched to that as her standard order, and claims it’s a gamechanger for painlessly moderating your alcohol intake. But I can’t help but feel short-changed, handing over three quid for a drink that can be downed in two-and-a-half swigs, leaving you to wait for your companion to finish their monster pint.
The two-thirds pint is the perfect compromise: enough beer to feel you’ve got your money’s worth, and can relax into the experience – but not so much that it leaves no room in your stomach for anything else.
I developed a preference for the two-thirds pour while living in Sydney, where the “schooner” is standard. I certainly wouldn’t say that Australia has a more civilised drinking culture than Britain, or less alcohol-related harm: the sheer range of measures available (a schooner, a pot, a middy, a handle, a glass; some differing by state) speaks to beer’s central importance.
But the widespread acceptance of smaller serves, in my experience, made for a better time at the pub. Coming in at a touch over two-thirds of a pint, I found that the standard 425ml schooner is the perfect volume of liquid for catching up with a friend, and creating a break from your day but not sending it off track. Even if you do go in for a second, you’ve still had less than one litre of beer.
Really, when you think about it, 568ml is an obscene amount of liquid to consume in one sitting – and 1,136ml even more so. It probably wouldn’t occur to you to drink more than half a litre of coffee, or milkshake, or kombucha at a time. So why is it the norm, in Britain, with beer – and despite the known harms?
I know that I’ve looked askance at teenagers chugging from those bucket-sized cans of energy drinks and wondered what all that guarana must be doing to their systems. But with alcohol, we know only too well that it’s nothing good. Even drinking in moderation isn’t as harmless as we’ve been led to believe, with many of those findings reached by flawed methodology, and sometimes with funding from the alcohol industry.
You could argue, given the increasingly damning research, that reducing the standard measure by a third isn’t going far enough: we should be abstaining from alcohol entirely. I don’t foresee Britain ever becoming teetotal – but that doesn’t mean there aren’t changes that could be made, to reduce the harms of alcohol without encroaching on the pleasures.
At the Bear pub in Sheffield, which participated in the Cambridge study, punters generally stuck to two drinks rather than making up the difference with a third, suggesting it’s the two-drink ritual that is important to British drinkers rather than the size of the glass. The experiment suggests that, with a relatively straightforward tweak, we can still enjoy the ritual of alcohol while avoiding some of the adverse effects.
The British pint is one of the largest standard servings in the world – bigger than those in Australia, Germany and the US. It has been that way since 1698, when a law was passed to prevent publicans from short-changing their customers with shorter measures. But now we know that more is not always better – especially in the case of alcohol. We might not be willing to give up drinking entirely, but certainly in Australia I was happy to settle for less.
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Elle Hunt is a freelance journalist