Stop Drinking Podcast by Soberclear
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Stop Drinking Podcast by Soberclear
The Disturbing Reality of Big Alcohol
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Welcome to the Stop Drinking Podcast, where we help you make stopping drinking a simple, logical and easy decision. We help you with tips, tools and strategies to start living your best life when alcohol free. If you want to learn more about stop drinking coaching, then head over to wwwsoberclearcom. Have you ever wondered who really pours your drink? Well, behind the pretty labels and drink responsibly slogans lurks a global machine that's hooking new customers, shaping the science and even sneaking into schools.
Speaker 1:Today we are pulling back the curtain on big alcohol's darker secrets, and the first disturbing reality is this Most of the alcohol that you drink, no matter the brand, traces back to just a handful of multinational giants quietly consolidating power and limiting where your booze really comes from. See, over the years, the alcohol industry has gradually become dominated by multinational companies. In certain beverage categories, a handful of companies control as much as half the worldwide market. So, against a background of ever-increasing range of brands and beverages, which we'll come to shortly, the reality is that the actual ethanol in the drinks is coming from an ever-decreasing number of sources. These are industrial conglomerates that you've probably never heard of. They make ethanol in mind-boggling quantities. Most of it actually ends up as fuel in your car, while some is diverted to the alcoholic beverage industry. Add a generous sprinkling of colourings, sweeteners, preservatives and hundreds of other chemicals and voila in your glass, ready to enjoy.
Speaker 1:The second disturbing reality is that their drink-responsibly messages are no noble public service. Instead, these campaigns are carefully engineered, soundbites, misleading and never clearly defined, ensuring that nearly everybody thinks that they're sipping responsibly, while real harm goes unchecked. Now did you know that this slogan has been conceived and promoted by the alcohol industry? In fact, they've even funded it, which is exactly why it's become such a dominant meme in society. This is backed up by big dollars and disseminated by countless alcohol-funded organisations and so-called independent charities. The problem is that it's set up to fail. You see, while the word drink is very straightforward and unambiguous, the second one, responsibly, is almost never defined Meaning. There is no specific, practical and actionable information for the consumer, and many drinkers come to believe that as long as, for example, they're not totally losing control or causing harm to other people, they're drinking responsibly. In the UK, research found that 9 out of 10 drinkers think that they are drinking responsibly. Even among those who describe themselves as heavy drinkers, 1 out of 3 believe this as well. This empty phrase, along with all the others, like enjoy responsibly, drink smart or know when to stop ultimately serve only to build credibility and advertise the product. It's also the industry's way of signalling that they're playing ball, that self-regulation is working and no further government legislation or regulation is necessary. These campaigns are the industry's defence against effective measures that would make a difference but hurt their bottom line during the process, things like increasing tax, banning advertising and restricting the sale of alcoholic beverages. Various independent organisations are now calling for an end to the drink-responsibly messaging as the first step towards public policy interventions that will actually work.
Speaker 1:The third disturbing reality is the creation of gateway products aimed at hooking the young and underage. Sweet, candy-like concoctions disguised as starter drinks flood the market, lowering the age at which kids take their first sip. They're locking in customers before they're old enough to understand the risks. Up until a few decades ago, most of the booze on the market boiled down to three categories Wine, beer and distilled spirits like vodka or gin. All that changed in the 1980s when the industry launched a new class of products, so-called flavoured alcoholic beverages. These started with wine coolers in the United States and Alcopops in the UK. Today there are countless products, including supersized Alcopops, hard seltzers, ready-to-drink cocktails and so on. What these drinks have in common is their relatively low alcohol content, sweet taste and marketing as products for quote entry-level drinkers. It's basically soda pop with alcohol, and the end result has been predictable. While the industry is publicly signaling its commitment to fight underage drinking, this has actually exploded. In the US, alcohol is the drug minors consume the most, far exceeding tobacco and marijuana. The average age someone had their first drink fell from 17.5 in the 1960s to less than 16 today, and one recent report found that nearly half of all calls to poison control centres involve underage drinkers consuming these beverages.
Speaker 1:Now the fourth disturbing reality lies in the secrecy surrounding ingredients and processes. With lab-engineered flavors, stripped-down malt bases and questionable additives, these drinks are crafted behind a veil of regulations that leave consumers utterly in the dark about what's actually inside each bottle or can. The rise of flavored alcoholic beverages has had a terrifying result. When you have one of these drinks, you literally have no idea what's in the bottle. For legal purposes in the United States, these drinks are generally treated as beer. To comply with this, the manufacturers start with a malt base, which they strip of the aroma and taste. They then add all sorts of flavours and colourings, as well as distilled alcohol. But in many cases, the large majority of the alcohol content comes from these added distilled sources, in violation of the regulations, and nobody has any idea what's in the stuff. Unlike foods and non-alcoholic beverages in the US, alcohol makers are not legally required to list all the ingredients on the label. This is an unfortunate consequence of the fact that these drinks are regulated by the Bureau of Alcohol, tobacco and Firearms instead of the FDA.
Speaker 1:As if this wasn't bad enough, alcohol companies will also often misleadingly use the names of their distilled spirits when promoting some of these flavoured drinks. They can trick consumers into thinking they're getting a lighter version of the well-known distilled spirit brand. This marketing gimmick is further compounded through the use of phrases like taste like rum, the flavour of brandy and so on. But these drinks have nothing in common with vodka, rum or any of the other distilled beverages. They are literally developed in labs by scientists and technicians in white coats.
Speaker 1:The fifth disturbing reality is their insidious funding of research by bankrolling certain studies while ignoring others. Big alcohol skews the science, perpetuating comforting myths. So you've no doubt heard that low or moderate alcohol consumption will benefit your heart, right? Well, it's simply not true. This myth has been sustained, in part due to the industry's decade-long funding of academic research into alcohol's health effects. This is in a very similar manner to what the tobacco industry was doing 50 or 60 years ago. Now this doesn't generally work through outright fraud, like falsifying the numbers or making up data. It doesn't have to. It's simply a question of researchers following the industry money. If the money is in researching alcohol's very ambiguous positive effects on the heart, then that's what you'll study, instead of something more realistic like, say, alcohol and cancer or alcohol and your liver. The other crucial point is how you set up the study and how you design it, and what statistical measures that you use, and so on.
Speaker 1:A notorious recent episode in this story was the so-called Moderate Alcohol and Cardiovascular Health Trial, which was prematurely terminated in 2018. This National Institute of Health study was intended to study the possible cardioprotective effects of alcohol at low doses. It would recruit 7,800 volunteers, who would be randomly assigned to one of two groups. In one group, volunteers would drink no alcohol at all, and in the other, they would have a single alcoholic beverage of their choice every day. They would then be followed up for six years, at the end of which the two groups would be compared. This comparison would determine if the moderate alcohol drinkers came out with stronger hearts.
Speaker 1:Roughly two-thirds of the 100 million budget came from industry giants like Anheuser-Busch, carlsberg and Diageo. The damning internal report that led to the trial's termination found that some of the researchers, many of whom had financial ties with the industry, kept key facts hidden from their colleagues See. The interactions between the researchers and the industry representatives also appeared to intentionally bias the study towards quote demonstrating a beneficial health effect of moderate alcohol consumption. The report also noted that, incredibly, the study endpoints, in other words, the health parameters that would be assessed at the end of the six years, did not include heart failure. The study was also too short and too small to detect cancer incidence. This set it up to find benefits but miss potential harms. And this is how the industry corrupts science Work with selected researchers, select a favourable topic, pick a design and then throw massive funds at it.
Speaker 1:Now the sixth disturbing reality emerges from sports field and arenas. By pumping millions into sponsorship, these companies forge a false link between drinking and athletic excellence, bypassing restrictions on advertising to young audiences and planting the seeds of brand loyalty before kids reach adulthood. Listen, when you think about it for a minute, it's difficult to find two worlds that are more far apart and incompatible than booze and sports. Drinking is basically one of the most effective ways to guarantee that you won't do sports. It will bog you down, it'll sap your energy, it'll wreck your sleep, tax your heart. So on the face of it, it's somewhat of a mystery why the alcohol industry is so heavily invested in sports advertising. In the US alone, alcohol beverage brands spend nearly half a billion dollars a year sponsoring major leagues like the NFL, nba and Major League Baseball. And here's what's crazy Between 8-10% of these leagues' total sponsorship revenue is coming from the alcohol industry. Globally, this figure might be as high as 20%. The industry gets a massive return on this money.
Speaker 1:Repeated exposure to these messages during sporting events has been shown to have long-lasting effects on consumer behavior. See consumers unconsciously associate watching their sport, especially their favorite team or player, with drinking. So presenting booze alongside a healthy activity like sports also helps normalize it, making it appear less toxic and more acceptable. But more insidiously, sports sponsorships allows the industry to bypass various restrictions on alcohol advertising, in particular the restrictions related to minors. You see in many countries around the world. Direct alcohol advertising is prohibited during daytime hours, when children are typically awake, but most sporting events are usually held and televised during the day. Children watching, whether they realise it or not, will be bombarded by this constant advertising. It's setting the stage for early initiation into alcohol. This is the reason countries like France move to completely ban alcohol advertising in sport, while others like Norway and Turkey have placed severe restrictions on it.
Speaker 1:Now the seventh and final disturbing reality is that they've infiltrated our schools.
Speaker 1:Masquerading as educational initiatives, these programs are training the next generation to view alcohol as just another normal part of life, quietly ensuring that their products remain central in our culture, starting with the very young. Now, of course, they don't do this directly, but through charities and other front organizations that are set up and largely funded by the industry. This is another example of the industry presenting themselves as part of the solution rather than the problem. For example, the well-publicized Smashed Project is an international theater-based educational program operating in various countries around the world. It organizes workshops for students and offers a certificate at the end.
Speaker 1:The stated goal is to discourage underage drinking, but what you won't find on their website is that they are actually funded by the industry. Schools in the UK, ireland and Australia have also been infiltrated by alcohol-backed charities whose stated goals are always the same Inform students about the dangers of underage drinking and promote responsible behaviours. In reality, the main goal is to prepare the next generation of lifelong customers, familiarise them with the product and normalise consumption. It also frames the industry as responsible, proactive stakeholders in order to pre-empt legislation that would make a real difference. It's more or less the same agenda as the Drink Responsibly campaign. This has led to independent researchers and campaigners demanding an end to these truly despicable programs.
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