CONSUMPtION OF ALCOHOLIC BeVeRAGeS

Most cultures throughout the world have traditionally consumed some form of alcoholic beverages for thousands of years, and local specialty alcoholic beverages still account for the majority of all those that exist. Only a small number have evolved into commodities that are produced commercially on a large scale. In world trade, beer from barley, wine from grapes and certain distilled beverages are sold as commodities. Other alcoholic beverages are not sold on the international market. In many developing countries, however, various types of home-made or locally produced alcoholic beverages such as sorghum beer, palm wine or sugarcane spirits continue to be the main available beverage types (WHO, 2004). It is difficult to measure the global production or consumption of locally available beverages, and few data exist on their specific chemical composition (see Section 1.6). A discussion of unrecorded alcohol production, which includes these traditional or home-made beverages, is given in Section 1.3. Although these types of alcoholic beverage can be important in several countries at the national level, their impact is fairly small on a global scale. This monograph focuses on the main beverage categories of beer, wine and spirits unless there is a specific reason to examine some subcategory, e.g. alcopops or flavoured alcoholic beverages. These categories are, however, not as clear-cut as they may seem. There are several beverages that are a combination of two types (e.g. fortified wines, in which spirits are added to wine). The categorization above is based on production methods and raw materials, and not on the ethanol content of the beverages (see Section 1.2). Another classification of beverages is the Standard International Trade Classification (SITC) that has four categories: wine from fresh grapes, cider and other fermented