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Keeping your wine consumption under control. A single drink on a daily basis can be good for your health, but controlling your intake can be challenging. A new study out this week looked at factors that influence how much wine a person pours. Participants were asked to pour either white or red wine into glasses of various shapes and sizes and were given different instructions about pouring. “Wide glasses caused subjects to pour 11.9% more than narrow ones. Holding the glass as opposed to leaving it on the table resulted in a 12.2% bigger serving. And when the glass sizes were the same, participants poured 9.2% less red wine than white because, the researchers theorize, the lower color contrast between white wine and a clear glass makes the glass look less full.” Researchers found gender and BMI also mattered. “Men in the study poured more than the women did and men with high BMI poured about 19% more than men with average BMI. For women, body mass didn’t make a difference.” Using a rule of thumb for measuring also helped. When asked to follow the rule “drink as much as you want, but fill the glass only halfway up each time you pour,” high-BMI men drank 31% less than those who didn’t, and men of average BMI drank 26% less. Women, on the whole, drank 27% less when they used the half-empty rule.”
