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Want to drink less? Study says get a smaller glass!

The results of a study shows that households who drank wine from smaller glasses consumed less alocohol.

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By Alice Clifford via SWNS

If you want to cut down on your wine consumption, scientists have come up with the ultimate hack - drink from a smaller glass.

The results of the Cambridge University study shows that households who drank wine from smaller glasses consumed around 6.5 percent less than those drinking from larger ones.

The trial recruited 260 United Kingdom households that consumed at least two 75cl bottles of wine each week.

During two 14-day intervention periods, each household was randomly given bottles of wine for the fortnight. Some were given 75cl bottles and others were given 37.5cl.

They also randomly received small 290ml glasses or large 350ml glasses to drink with.

At the end of the 14th day and the 28th day, the researchers looked at how much wine was left in each bottle.

Dr. Eleni Mantzari, from the Behaviour and Health Research Unit at the university and co-author of the paper, found that those drinking from the smaller glasses drank around 6.5 percent less.

This is 253ml or a third of a bottle-less per fortnight.

It also revealed that drinking from a smaller bottle reduced the amount of wine drunk by 3.6 per cent. This is 146ml less per fortnight.

Dr. Mantzari said: "Wine is the most commonly drunk alcoholic beverage in Europe, including the United Kingdom and most wine is consumed in homes rather than in bars, restaurants or pubs.

"Using smaller glasses to drink wine at home may reduce consumption," Mantzari said.

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"Greater uncertainty remains around the possible effect of drinking from smaller bottles."

She added: "Alcohol consumption is a major contributor to premature death and disease globally.

"Reducing alcohol consumption at the population level would decrease the risk of a range of non-communicable diseases, including some cancers, cardiovascular disease and Type 2 diabetes.

"Interventions that target aspects of the physical environments that cue unhealthy behavior, such as product affordability, availability and size, have significant potential to have scalable impacts at a population level, including on reducing harmful alcohol consumption."

On average the size of wine glasses has increased dramatically over the last three decades.

This benefits businesses as using larger glasses increases the number of wine restaurants and bars sell, but it can lead to customers drinking more.

The study, published in the scientific journal, Addiction, highlights that reducing the size of wine glasses could contribute to policies for reducing drinking.

These policies could include pricing glasses according to capacity to increase the demand for smaller glasses and regulating glass sizes in bars to help change the societal norm that the larger the glass the better.

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