Study finds less alcohol in alcoholic beverages

There are a lot of things that aren’t made today as they were made in the Good Old Days – including beer, wine and liquor.

Since the early 1950s, the alcohol content of alcoholic beverages has declined substantially, according to William Kerr and his colleagues at the Alcohol Research Group. The average alcohol content of liquor dropped five percentage points from the early 1950s to 1997, they report. At the same time, the average alcohol content of wine sold in the United States fell from 16.75 percent in 1950 to 10.49 percent in 1991, then rebounded to 11.45 in 2002. The alcohol content in beer fell from 5.02 percent in 1950 to 4.58 percent in 1993 and rose to 4.65 percent in 2002, Kerr found.

Their findings appear in the latest issue of Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research.