Mirror, mirror on the wall, will drinking affect my looks at all?
Mirror mirror on the wall, what will I look like after all?
(Credit: DrinkSmarter.org)
The very week that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released the results of a survey on drinking patterns among U.S. females (notably that 1 in 5 high school girls and 1 in 8 women report binge drinking), the Scottish government launched its Drop a Glass Size campaign, complete with app, in an attempt to get people to drink a little less every day.
The free Drinking Mirror app, for iPhone andAndroid devices, has users take or upload existing photos of themselves and watch their faces age over the course of 10 years based on their current rates of alcohol consumption.
The developers fully admit that they are playing the vanity card -- and targeting women in particular.
"In Scotland, we have a troubled relationship with alcohol," an unnamed spokeswoman told CNN. "We're focusing on women to try a different approach."
When it comes to alcohol, simply following the guidelines can be difficult. A "drink" of alcohol is obviously vague, and a "unit" changes depending on the type of alcohol being consumed.
It (hopefully) goes without saying that the campaign isn't just aiming for a more attractive population. The Scottish Health Survey reports that in Scotland one in 30 deaths among women is alcohol-related.
According to the campaign's Web site, the recommended daily limit of alcohol is two to three "units" for women and three to four for men. A unit of spirits is 25 milliliters, which is about .85 ounces, or roughly half a shot, while a 20-ounce beer (568 milliliters, aka the "Imperial pint," which is larger than the typical 16-ounce pint) clocks in at 2.8 units. So a woman wanting to stick to the recommended two to three units a day should try to stay under 1.5 standard pints of beer or 1.5 shots of liquor.
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