One of my graphic design students made an infographic addressing this topic last year, but it also breaks down alcohol consumption by category (spirits, wine, beer, etc). The U.S. may drink more liquor than Western Europe but theyâve got us beat pretty handily for overall alcohol consumption.
[Credit: Lili Chiok]
Ah America, right there in the meaty part of the bell curve, not showing off, not falling behind.
Dear god, the South Koreans have a serious problem with alcoholism. That mixed with their preoccupation with plastic surgery seems like a bad combo.
Is Germany no longer considered part of âWesternâ Europe? 
If you read at the chart, it shows that Germans drink more alcohol than Americans but marginally less in terms of hard liquor (indicated in pink). So they fit the pattern Rob and I just described.
This keeps getting passed around the interwebs, but itâs really bothering me how the article ignores that most soju is ~20% ABV, while most distilled spirits (at least in the US) are ~40-50% ABV. Just comparing volume and then declaring Koreans twice as drunk/alcohol abusing as Russians is a really dumb and sloppy reporting.
Turkey pips Britain & Ireland to take the #1 tea-drinking crown
But are they counting the very popular Turkish Apple âTeaâ as âTeaâ? Not at all clear.
Neat, but a bit hard to use. Matching the tiny bit of color to alcohol type wasnât obvious to me, especially considering that the order from the legend isnât preserved in the barrels.
Yeah â I was just going to mention that in many places in Southern California (which has a large Korean population) that restaurants can get a beer/wine/soju license much easier than getting a full liquor license because soju isnât really considered âhard liquorâ.
Perhaps next time you can enroll in the class too and give feedback during peer critiques.
Sojy is practically water, you might as well count 7up in this graph.
Nice. Interesting, and well done. The only negative thing that I noticed is that the sum of Germanyâs percentages is only 90%.
Oh crap, I think I may have missed that when I graded this project. Oh well, close enough.
Yeah, itâs not a big deal; the take-away is still the same. I imagine that it was just a typo.
or, they just donât have enough beer and wine
How were the countries included selected? Are tehy the top consumers or the largest countries? And can someone buy India a drink?
I donât really remember, I think she just went for a representative cross-sample of highly populated countries. The project was more of an information design exercise than a rigorous scientific analysis.
Snarky. Hope it makes you feel better.
Oh, Iâm quite serious. Iâm always looking to get our enrollment numbers up.
