Dry January Letdown

Phil: Talking about stopping eating meat for January. Also, people are looking at Dry January as a way to stop drinking. We've talked about that before, but a new report has just come out saying that health experts say that those who are trying to curb their drinking or stay sober for Dry January may find it helpful to hold an alcohol-free mimosa or faux mai tai when they socialize. However, if you've got severe alcohol use disorder, which I didn't even know was a thing, defined by the National Institutes of Health, it might not help because what it's doing when you have one of these faux cocktails, it's just reinforcing the whole cocktail thing versus, you know, getting you to stop. And if we look at the stats after Veganuary, after Dry January, sorry, people go back to drinking. 

Sally: Yes. We haven't seen a huge impact on people quitting drinking. And, you know, for the Mocktail trend is great for those who do not have a negative relationship with alcohol that is bad for them. It's also great for Gen Z, this generation that's growing up that really isn't into drinking as much, but they like to go out and socialize. So mocktails can be fun. But we do have 6% of adults in the US according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, 6% have an alcohol use disorder. And during the pandemic we saw alcohol related deaths go higher than they ever have been before. So, it is a different situation for those who are dealing with that. And you know, the other thing, Phil, is when we think about these mocktails as well is, if you are going with the mocktail and you're going with the mocktail because you think, "oh, I don't want as much sugar, the alcohol's giving me too much sugar", you might be getting more sugar in that mocktail because some of them without the alcohol, they're using other ingredients to make it taste good and tomake it exciting that are just adding a lot more sugar to it. 

Phil: Absolutely. So, you know it comes back to something that we've talked about for years. It's all about balance. That's all. It's balance and reading labels