Northern Italians Drink More

To mark Alcohol Prevention Day, Istat, l'Istituto Superiore di Sanita, released yesterday some damning details on the social lives of our Northern Italian friends: the consumption of alcoholic beverages is much higher in the North than the South.

According to Istat, 11.3% of Northern Italians consume alcohol more than 12 times a year, compared to 4.8% of Southern Italians (a country avg. of 7.7%) The Istat report also concludes that 8.4% of the Italian population got drunk last year, and further findings support that alcohol consumption is often linked to mealtime wine-drinking and cigarettes.

Italian alcohol consumption, however, is much less than what it is stateside, where a CDC survey reported that 54.9% of U.S. adults (compared to Italy's 7.7%) have consumed at least one drink in the past month.