Want to feel relaxed over the holidays? Maybe choose red wine over shots.
You are what you eat -- and drink -- to some extent. So during the Thanksgiving holiday when family tensions are running high, it can't hurt to be mindful of what you're sipping on.
A new study from Public Health Wales looked at about 30,000 responses from 18- to 34-year-olds from 21 different countries to a survey about drinking habits and emotions.
The survey asked about beer, hard liquor (or spirits), and red and white wine. Participants were asked what feelings they associated with the different beverages, including these emotions: energized, relaxed, sexy, confident, tired, aggressive, ill, restless, and tearful.
The research, published in the journal BMJ Open, found the different types of alcohols were associated with different emotions. Red wine was linked to a relaxed emotion for 53 percent of respondents, and 50 percent of beer drinkers.
Spirits brought out bad feelings, with about a third of spirit drinkers associating the drink with aggression. Only 2.5 percent of red wine drinkers listed aggressive.
It wasn't all bad news for hard alcohol -- nearly 60 percent of respondents said the drink made them feel energetic and confident. More than 40 percent ticked "sexy" on the survey.
Kathryn Ashton, the lead author, said in a release that we might be drinking for the wrong reasons.
“People routinely use alcohol in order to alter their moods, but this study suggests different drink choices may result in different emotional outcomes," she said. "Understanding the relationships between different drinks and their emotional consequences may provide important insights into the prevention of alcohol related harms.”
The researchers hoped that analyzing what emotions people associate with drinking would help them understand why people misuse alcohol and what drives people to drink certain alcoholic beverages.
The study also looked at demographics like gender, age, educational background, and more. Broken down by gender, men were more likely to feel aggressive with all alcohol.
Of course, why people drink isn't only based on the emotion they associate with the drink. Ads, social pressures, where we're drinking, and countless other factors contribute to how we think about our drinking choices.
Cheers.
Sasha is a news writer at Mashable's San Francisco office. She's an SF native who went to UC Davis and later received her master's from the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. She's been reporting out of her hometown over the years at Bay City News (news wire), SFGate (the San Francisco Chronicle website), and even made it out of California to write for the Chicago Tribune. She's been described as a bookworm and a gym rat.
