Every country seems to have different guidelines as to what people should and should not drink. In the Netherlands last year, 4 out of 10 Dutch people heeded the advice of the Dutch Health Council to not have more than one glass (no idea of the quantity or the unit) of alcohol a day.

Last year some 80.4% of all Dutch adults drank alcohol, with highly educated men drinking the most. Out of the highly educated, 7 out of 10 Dutch people didn’t follow the Health Council advice, while for folks with a lower level of education, it was 5 out of 10. The older Dutch people are, the more they follow the council’s advice.

Dutch men drink more excessively on a regular basis than women: 14 glasses a week for women and 21 for men. Again, no clue how much alcohol is in a glass. Heavy drinking is seen as at least 4 glasses a day for women and 6 glasses a day for men. Four or even six glasses is a night down the pub for me, but then not every day or even every week or month.

According to this illustration, the excessive drinkers are aged 20-24 and 65-74, while the heavy drinkers are 20-24 followed by 18-19. I’m guessing the older ones are retired – good on them.

I drink less than I used to, but I have to say the cheap price of alcohol in general lets me drink more than I did in Canada. You can buy half a litre of beer for € 0,50 and a litre of wine for € 1,50. Granted, it’s not the good stuff.

(Link: foodlog.nl)

An elementary school in the Achterhoek, a region to the East that extends into Germany, has decided to teach kids in grades 5 and 6 (the oldest kids) the evils of boozing it up in an illegal booze shack (in Dutch, ‘zuipkeet’), which usually attracts underaged drinkers.

However, the school’s plan is to do this by letting the kids set up a drink shack to find out what it is like in order to tell them about group drinking and fire safety. The school claims that the goal is not to show kids how to set up shop, but to teach them how bad drinking is if ever they do set up shop because then they’ll do it safely.

According to the media and public opinion, rural areas apparently have booze shacks, which are at least partially responsible for teenagers learning the fine art of binge drinking. I’ve never seen one, but I’m sure they are more real than unicorns.

Yes, we get that kids should learn about responsible drinking or the effects alcohol has on their growing bodies and all that, but I wonder whether parents will be thrilled about this method.

(Links: www.nieuws.nl, www.omroepgelderland.nl)

National Geographic made this handy interactive chart that shows how different cultures deal with hangovers. According to the chart, only one people kills its “brackish” feeling, as they say here, by pouring alcohol on top of alcohol, and that’s the Dutch. Visit the site and hover the images for more illumination about inebriation.

Via Sargasso (Dutch).

Last Tuesday night, two men climbed into a hoist vehicle and stripped. The neighbours got annoyed and called the police and fire brigade, who couldn’t get them down because the hoist vehicle’s controls didn’t work. The rescue services were called, a ladder was extended and the two men were brought down safely. The men were extremely ungrateful and aggressive towards the rescuers, who calmed them down with a faceful of pepper spray. Then one man jumped into the canal and the firemen got him out with a boat. Both were arrested for being drunk, stoned and disorderly.

(Link)