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Mar 8, 2018
In its 132-year history, Coca-Cola has produced a panoply of drinks alongside its signature soda, including bottled water, juices, sports beverages and an Indian refreshment described as “spicy,” “mature” and “masculine.”
This year, the company is mixing in booze.
In Japan, a fiercely competitive market where Coca-Cola says it introduces 100 new products each year, the company plans to test a flavoured, bubbly drink spiked with alcohol.
Coca-Cola has never before ventured into the so-called alcopop sector. But fizzy drinks made with alcohol, fruit juice and sparkling water or soda, a category known as chu-hi in Japan, are popular across the country.
The new drink is the latest idea from a beverage maker that has expanded to new markets with an array of products as the sugary-soda industry, battered by concerns about its health effects, continues its multi-decade decline.
In 2016, Coca-Cola said it unveiled the equivalent of nearly two new products globally every day.
Jorge Garduño, who has led the company’s Japanese division since July, said in an interview on the Coca-Cola website that the chu-hi gambit was “a modest experiment for a specific slice of our market”.
Coca-Cola said it had no additional details about the drink, and no plans to offer it in other markets.
“I don’t think people around the world should expect to see this kind of thing from Coca-Cola,” Mr Garduño said in the interview.
While many markets are becoming more like Japan, I think the culture here is still very unique and special, so many products that are born here will stay here.”
The term chu-hi is an Japanese amalgamation of the words “highball,” a mixed drink, and “Shochu,” a spirit that can be distilled from rice barley, sweet potatoes and other ingredients. Chu-hi drinks are available across the country. Some are concocted on the spot in restaurants, but most are sold in cans at supermarkets, convenience stores and liquor shops or in vending machines.
The beverages are typically more affordable than other alcoholic drinks because their alcohol content, which is usually from 2 to 9 percent, means they are taxed less than stronger drinks.
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Parents who give their children alcohol increase the risk that they will binge drink in their teenage years, an Australian study has found.
There is no evidence to support the view that parents who give their children alcohol are reducing the risk of binge drinking or alcohol-related harms in their teenage years, found the study involving just under 2000 adolescents between 12 and 18 years old.
There is no evidence to support the view that parents who give their children alcohol are reducing the risk of binge drinking or alcohol-related harms in their teenage years.
Teenagers whose parents allow them to drink are twice as likely to access alcohol through other sources and engage in binge drinking, the researchers reported on Friday in Lancet Public Health.
Teenagers given alcohol by their parents were 95 per cent more likely to binge drink – more than four standard drinks in one sitting – in the future than those who had found another way to score a drink.
"This reinforces the fact that alcohol consumption leads to harm, no matter how it is supplied," said lead author Professor Richard Mattick, a drug and alcohol dependency and behaviour expert at UNSW. "We advise that parents should avoid supplying alcohol to their teenagers if they wish to reduce their risk of alcohol-related harms."
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Today's teenagers are turning their backs on Australia's excessive drinking culture, and shunning other drugs, in a change that has been dubbed a modern "youth revolution".
A study involving more than 41,000 Australian adolescents (average age 13.5) has observed a staggering drop in rates of teen alcohol consumption and smoking since 1999
At the turn of the century, almost 70 per cent of surveyed teenagers had already drunk alcohol. By 2015, that figure that dropped to 45 per cent, meaning high school students abstaining from alcohol are now in the majority.
An author of the study, Professor John Toumbourou, said while the adult population were also showing signs of moderating their alcohol consumption, it did not compare to the sharp trend within the secondary school population.
"They are making changes that are much more dramatic to other age groups," said Professor Toumbourou, chair in health psychology at Deakin University.
"It's a new, youth-led revolution."
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If you had told me a few years ago that my husband and I would completely cut alcohol out of our life, I would’ve laughed you off sarcastically as we raised our wine glasses for yet another clink and sip and then mocked that ridiculous comment. I mean, come on, who doesn’t drink in today’s society? Apart from certain religious groups, pregnant women or recovering alcoholics.
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Key findings
- Change in alcohol consumption per capita was significantly and positively associated with change in both male and female head and neck cancer mortality, particularly among males and females aged 50 and above.
- Change in alcohol consumption per capita was significantly and positively associated with change in male liver cancer mortality, particularly among males aged 50-69.
- The results suggest that one litre decreases in annual alcohol consumption per capita were associated with reductions of 11.6 per cent in male and 7.3 per cent in female head and neck cancer mortality across a 20-year period.
- The results also suggest that one litre decreases in annual alcohol consumption per capita were associated with a reduction of male liver cancer mortality of 15.0 per cent across a 20-year period.
- In total, it is estimated from the analysis that about 6.5 per cent of male and 4.1 per cent of female head and neck cancer deaths were related to alcohol consumption in Australia between 1968 and 2011.
- Alcohol consumption was estimated to be responsible for 8.4 per cent of male liver cancer deaths in Australia in the last 50 years