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Leeds drinkers wanted for booze experiment
People in Leeds are being asked to take part in an experiment to find out how much alcohol people in Britain drink at Christmas.
Alcohol awareness charity Drinkaware has put touch screens in the centres of Leeds, Glasgow, London and Birmingham.
It wants people to enter what they had to drink in the last 24 hours and the information will then be collated.
Christmas party-goers will drink more than 600 million units of alcohol during the festive season, according to research.
Festive celebrations, including Christmas day itself, will see British drinkers guzzle the equivalent of 265 million pints, 602 million shots of vodka or 286 million glasses of mulled wine, the research by Drinkaware found.
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Nearly half of those surveyed (47%) said they were likely to drink more than the recommended daily guidelines, which is three to four units a day for men and two to three units for women.
The charity said it believed using the touch screens would be the largest ever interactive assessment of the nation's drinking habits, allowing people to compare their drinking with the rest of the nation.
The ICM poll of 2,010 adults, carried out for Drinkaware, found one in seven (14%) drink more than they mean to over Christmas while one in six (16%) believe December is the one month of the year they can drink without feeling guilty.
More than one in three Britons (36%) will go to three or more Christmas events, with more than half (53%) saying they will drink alcohol at most or all of the festive parties they attend.
More men are expected to drink over their unit guidelines during the festive season (54%) than women (41%).
Chief executive of Drinkaware Chris Sorek said: "For many people, December and the festive season is a time for getting together with loved ones and celebrating over a drink or two, or even more!
"It might feel like party time, but it's still really important to keep track of how much you're drinking - the long-term effects of drinking to excess can last for much longer than Christmas.
"Although it seems an enormous amount, it's likely that 602 million units is actually an underestimate of how much alcohol we'll slug over the festive season.
"Conducting an experiment to find out what Britain is drinking this Christmas will encourage people to think about how much they've had to drink over the last 24 hours and help to educate them about units at the same time."
The information gathered from the screens will be captured on the Drinkaware website. The results will be reported early next year.
The number of units to be drunk over the Christmas season was calculated by multiplying the average number of units consumed at festive occasions in December by the average number of occasions attended and extrapolated to the wider population of adults of drinking age.
People who want to take part in the Drinkaware Christmas survey should log on to http://www.drinkaware.co.uk/
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Friday 25 May 2012
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