Alcohol has long been portrayed as a "social lubricant", an effect possibly explained by the alcohol myopia theory. It suggests that intoxication can result in "hyperfocus directed to emotional situations when they are sufficiently relevant to grab attention, or a reduced attentional focus to emotional events in the presence of a relevant demanding task", according to a 2010 paper on the topic by a group of researchers from Spain and Brazil.
On the other hand, alcohol is a drug that negatively affects psychological and physical health. As the World Health Organization postulated in a news briefing from January 2023 "alcohol is a toxic, psychoactive, and dependence-producing substance and has been classified as a Group 1 carcinogen by the International Agency for Research on Cancer decades ago – this is the highest risk group, which also includes asbestos, radiation and tobacco."
However, as Statista's Florian Zandt notes, the ambivalent picture of alcohol consumption doesn't stop many people from drinking regularly.
The chart based on Statista's Consumer Insights shows that beer is the most frequently consumed alcoholic beverage in almost every market surveyed.
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Only in Switzerland, South Africa and Sweden is wine more popular than lagers, pilsners, ales and other types of beer, with between 26 and 42 percent of respondents regularly consuming the beverage created from fermented grapes.
In Latin American and Southern European countries like Mexico, Spain or Italy, beer is the more popular choice, being consumed regularly by between 45 and 53 percent of respondents.
Regarding the overall beverage consumed regularly by the highest share of survey participants, coffee comes out on top in 15 of the 20 countries analyzed, reaching respondent shares of 80 percent in Brazil or 78 percent in Poland.
In China (51 percent), the United States (61 percent) and Italy (75 percent), bottled water ranks highest, while 69 percent of Indians surveyed regularly drink tea and 72 percent of respondents in South Africa consume juice on a regular basis.