The recommended alcohol intake for people in the U.K. has been made considerably more stringent. In a document published this month, the U.K. Chief Medical Officers have made some significant changes to their previous recommendations.
The new set of guidelines has been finalized after studying the current policies on this subject in several different societies, according to the Guidelines notified by the Chief Medical Officers. One of the guidelines, which is different from previous guidelines, is that any alcohol intake may increase the risk of cancer. Hence, as a general principle, alcohol intake in general has the potential for harmful consequences.
In terms of the recommended intake, the guidelines indicate that women may drink up to 14 units of alcohol a week (roughly equivalent to 5 pints of beer). One major change from previous guidelines is that men may now only drink the same as women in the U.K. For the men too, then, the recommended alcohol intake is up to 14 units of alcohol every week, according to CNN.
The proposals also indicate that the thinking regarding whether pregnant women may consume alcohol has also changed. Unlike guidelines issued in previous years, the current guidelines recommend that pregnant women should not consume any alcohol at all during their pregnancy, according to the Hints News Network.
The guidelines also are not very supportive of one previous guideline that had suggested that drinking wine may be healthy for the heart. The current guidelines indicate that this may only be true for a specific subset of the population - women over the age of 55 years - rather than for the population as a whole.
For comparison, in the U.S. the guidelines for women are similar to the guidelines for women in the U.K. However, the guideline applicable to men is different. In the U.S., men may consume up to 24 units of alcohol a week, nearly twice as much as is recommended for the U.K.
