How many units of alcohol a week is healthy?
Current UK Alcohol guidelines
It’s recommended to drink no more than 14 units of alcohol a week, spread across 3 days or more. That’s around:
- 6 medium (175ml) glasses of wine, or
- 6 pints of 4% beer.
Lets go back a bit. Choosing alcohol can be confusing. There are many options and the way of measuring alcohol content is complex. So it’s hard to know how much alcohol you’re drinking.
A unit of alcohol is a measure of the amount of pure alcohol in a drink. Here, we explain how it’s measured. We also provide tips to help you understand how many units are in a drink.
What is a unit of alcohol?
A unit of alcohol is a straightforward, standardised method of measuring the actual amount of pure alcohol in a drink. Alcoholic beverages come in different sizes, with different strengths of alcohol inside them. The unit system helps you to calculate the alcohol content of a drink. It also allows you to compare it to other drinks of varying sizes and types.
In the UK, one unit equals 10ml or 8g of pure alcohol. As an example, an average strength pint of beer, or 175ml glass of wine, contain about two units of alcohol.
Read below to find out how units of alcohol are calculated.
What is alcohol by volume (ABV)?
Alcohol by volume (ABV) is a standard measure to quantify the amount of alcohol in an alcoholic beverage. It’s expressed as a volume percent, which means it shows what portion of the total volume of liquid is alcohol.
If a bottle of wine has an ABV of 13%, it means that 13% of the total volume is pure alcohol. ABV gives us a clear idea of how strong (or alcoholic) a drink is.
Hence a strong wine has more units than a weaker one, even if the glass size is the same.
Beers and ciders typically contain 2% to 8% alcohol. Wines contain 8% to 14%. Spirits such as whisky, rum, vodka, and gin are much stronger, with an alcohol content of 35% to 40%.
How are units of alcohol measured?
Drinks can have different amounts of alcohol depending on the type and size of the drink.
There is a simple formula you can apply to calculate the number of units in any alcoholic drink:
