4 Secrets Alcohol Companies Hide from You!

Well , let's unravel the mysteries that the giants don't want you to know . Prepare for some intoxicating revelations . So , secret number one is that your drink is a Frankenstein creation and it has two parents the father is regulation and the mother is chemistry . Let me explain Now .

If you're an alcoholic beverage maker , you have one overarching goal in mind Sell as many units as possible , and the way to do that is to have your drinks on sale at the maximum number of outlets Supermarkets , gas stations , convenience stores you name it .

Well , it turns out that there are state regulations that specify what kinds of alcoholic beverages can be sold where , and the class of alcoholic beverage that generally gets the most leeway is beer . Now , if your product is a beer , then you can sell it , for example , at a gas station , whereas you wouldn't be able to if you were a hard liquor .

If it's beer , you can also advertise it on TV and get more favorable tax treatment . Basically , regulators have created an environment where everything works to your favor if you're selling beer . There is one problem , though Only a tiny number of alcoholic beverages nowadays are actually beer .

You see , up until the 1980s or so , if you wanted a drink , it was basically going to be a beer , a wine or a spirit . But then , as the chemistry got better and the alcohol makers got more creative , a new class of soft alcoholic beverages found their way onto the market .

It started with wine coolers in the 1980s , and it then transitioned to the so-called alcohol pops in the 1990s and eventually gave rise to today's staggering range of so-called flavored alcoholic beverages .

These are basically the brightly colored , nicely marketed junk drinks that make little attempt to explain what they are , except other than being a nice tasting beverage of ethanol . They sometimes use the name of something like a popular vodka or rum brand in their title , but they do not claim to be vodka or rum .

Well , legally and technically , these are usually classed as beer products , both by the regulators and the manufacturers themselves . In order to achieve this , the manufacturers use a complex manufacturing process that starts with a base beer .

They then strip this base to remove the taste and smell of beer and then add a number of other flavorings and alcohols to the mix . Now the end product is something that obviously tastes absolutely nothing like a beer and where most of the alcohol content does not come from the beer , but from the additives .

Now a 2003 research paper by the alcohol and tobacco tax and trade bureau concluded that a over 75% of the alcohol in most of these drinks is derived from the additives . Sometimes this can actually be as high as 99% . And b the large majority of these drinks did not contain even as much as 50% beer by volume .

For two of the products , research this figure was 1% , so 1% of the volume was beer for a product that is legally classed and sold as beer Reminds me of that famous incident where the makers of Pringles once argued in court that their product did not contain enough potato to be classed as potato chips . Now , secret number two are the additives .

So it should be clear from all of this that most of the alcoholic drinks on the market today are not the most wholesome of products .

As a society , we've focused a lot in recent decades on the junk chemicals in things like non-alcoholic fizzy drinks , soda pops and so on , and rightly so , but for some reason we've lost sight of the fact that most of the alcoholic drinks on the market today contain all of that junk . And then the alcohol itself .

We're talking flavourings , sweeteners , colourings , acids , stabilisers , preservatives , you name it . It's in your canned or bottled alcoholic drink . And listen , given the way that the market is today , it couldn't really be any other way , even if the manufacturers had the best of intentions , even if they were saints . Take , for example , a pre-prepared cocktail drink .

This comes in a can . You pick it up from your supermarket shelf and you expect it to taste nice , smell nice and resemble a real cocktail , no matter when and where and how you drink it . But just take a minute to reflect on the effort and detail that goes into getting a real cocktail at a bar .

You realise that the only possible way to get anything resembling this in a can is through an insane amount of chemical engineering . In a bar , everything is prepared on the spot and it's to be consumed right away .

Not saying that it's any healthier , but a canned cocktail drink is supposed to give you a reasonably similar sensation without using any fresh fruit or other ingredients , regardless of the serving temperature , regardless of how long the can has been sitting on your shelf or fridge .

The only way you can possibly start to tickle these boxes is by increasing the number of additives to crazy levels , levels that would have been unheard of just a few decades back Now . Another issue is the extent to which these additives are described as natural versus artificial .

So the lines between what is natural and what is artificial are so blurry that the distinction often loses all meaning . For example , a colouring derived from a fruit that has undergone many stages of processing Do you class that as natural or artificial ?

Well , at the end of the day , even if we agree to classify this as natural , the reality is that most of these natural additives are generally inferior to their artificial counterparts , which is why , in the few instances that they are used , the manufacturers go to great lengths to advertise their naturalness .

Now , secret number three is that they purposely create gateways for alcohol addiction in the young . So alcohol makers are faced with a problem . They are the makers and sellers of a poison , a toxic chemical ethanol that the body recognises as such , and the first time that our body encounters ethanol , it reacts accordingly .

You have a teenager who has never drunk before a shot of vodka ? Vodka is basically ethanol . Manufacturers actually often boast about how free from impurities their vodka is , meaning it is basically pure ethanol that's been watered down with water so that you can drink it without dying .

Now you can bet that the teenager either A he won't be able to drink it and B if he does , he will soon be throwing up or have a very strong desire to do so . The experience will be thoroughly unpleasant .

Now alcohol makers need a workaround to get past this problem , and the solution is to get ethanol in the drink , but in the way that the sensors can't detect it . You do this firstly by chemically stripping the beverage from the taste and smell of ethanol . Then you add all sorts of sugars and sweeteners to suppress the desire to vomit .

The result is a palatable drink that delivers the reinforcing , rewarding effects of alcohol , and it sets the stage for making somebody a lifelong customer . Now , as we mentioned above , this wonderful marketing trap started in the 1980s with the introduction of wine coolers and then eventually a staggering variety of flavored drinks .

Very early on , sociologists and other researchers realized that this new class of drinks spelled big trouble for America's youth and that it would eventually lead to unimaginable societal pain . For example , a 1991 study found that 12 to 18 year olds accounted for a whopping 35% of all wine coolers in the US .

That is way younger than the minimum drinking age of 21 . Now , at the same time , researchers were uncovering similar trends all over Europe . In the UK , for example , a 2003 study found that 41% of 14 to 15 year olds had consumed one of these beverages in the previous week . And listen , this is no accident .

The alcohol industry acknowledges that these types of drinks are manufactured , packaged , marketed and priced to target quote new drinkers , and another term is entry level drinkers . Now , the industry's excuse is that , while these types of drinkers may be younger , they do not condone underage drinking .

But believe me , they know very well that these drinks have resulted in the gap between the legal drinking age of 21 and the age of the first drink consistently widening . In the mid-1960s , america's juke had their first drink at an average age of 17.6 years . 25 years later , this has dropped to 15.9 , a stunning drop of almost two years .

This simply would not have been possible without the alcohol industry deliberately designing a new class of products to facilitate it . Maybe you'll disagree with me , but I'm just gonna come out and say it , but these products are pure evil , if you can think of any other appropriate adjective for something that can help get a 14-year-old girl pregnant .

These or the 15-year-old custodial sentences and criminal records all due to these products . If you can think of a better word , let me know in the comment section . Now , secret number four is that they promote the concept of responsible drinking .

So if you have a drinking problem and you get chatting with your family doctor about it , there's a good chance that they will suggest that you reduce consumption , drink responsibly , and listen , it's only natural that they would say so . This concept is basically the official government guideline . It's an idea that we have embraced as a society .

Go visit the websites of official government bodies . You will see that their stated mission is to quote prevent excessive alcohol use , not alcohol use altogether , just the excessive variety . To formalize this idea , various bodies and institutions have come up with their own arbitrary guidelines of what constitutes the threshold between normal and excessive alcohol use .

The CDC , on their website , quotes guidelines recommending a maximum of two drinks per day for men and one for women . Well , listen , it turns out that the whole idea of responsible drinking is directly promoted by the alcohol industry . Now , listen , you have to understand this for what it is .

It's a carefully crafted marketing initiative , thought out by very smart people with PhDs in marketing . The message is then approved by boards of directors and implemented via massive amounts of cash . You really think that they're doing this with your best interest at heart ? Well , listen . If that's the case , I suggest you think again .

For example , I'm looking at an eye-opening piece of research published in 2014 in the Journal of Alcohol and Drug Dependence . The researchers looked at drink-responsibly messages that appeared in magazine ads for alcoholic beverages in US magazines from 2008 to 2010 . They found that almost nine out of ten advertising messages contain some form of a drink-responsibly message .

In 95% of cases , the lettering of the message was smaller than the main advertising text . Now the authors concluded that , while ubiquitous , these messages are designed in a way to almost ensure that people will not notice them , which begs the question if you don't really want your audience to see the message , why do we in the first place ?

Now , the researchers also found that the industry almost never makes any attempt to define exactly what constitutes responsible drinking . If you really wanted someone to drink responsibly , wouldn't you explain to them what that actually means ? Well , this isn't done , and for good reason .

The researchers concluded , quote Inclusion of a responsibility message in a product ad may also convey an image of good faith and corporate responsibility to potential consumers as well as policymakers and public health advocates , which may serve in turn , to promote a positive corporate image and strengthen brand preferences , as well as deflect blame and diminish support from

government regulation

. Other researchers have described this intentional ambiguity as strategic . By keeping the message ambiguous , you avoid conflict , preempt counter arguments and make it more difficult for critics to attack you .

As the authors of this research paper noted , it would actually be quite easy to give some concrete meaning to the notion of responsible drinking , to make it more tangible . For example , all the messaging would have to say is less is better . This is something tangible , a piece of information that you can then actually act on .

But listen , alcohol manufacturers won't tell you that . They can also tell pregnant women not to drink or parents to talk to their children about the potential dangers of alcohol . Again , practical messages of this type are almost entirely absent .

In all fairness , the one actionable piece of advice that is sometimes contained in the marketing is warning against quote Drunk driving . But listen , even this is a severely compromised message , because it doesn't say to not drive after drinking , simply to not drive after you have reached a drunken state .

And listen alcohol affects driving performance even with the very first drink , even way below the legal limit of intoxication . What's more , for all the publicity that it receives , the reality is that drunk driving is only a small piece of the pain that alcohol inflicts on society . Less than 15% of alcohol related casualties are linked to drunk driving .

The other 85% is basically ignored by the industry , covered under an intentionally vague admonition to drink spontaneously .