BEER IS STILL NUMBER ONE

IT MAY HAVE been the summer of rosé and margaritas but beer continued to reign supreme overall as it edged out wine and liquor as the preferred alcoholic drink for adult Americans, according to the latest Gallup poll. Forty-three percent of US adult drinkers say they drink beer most often, the highest percentage recorded since 2OO2, when 44 percent said the same. Meanwhile, 32 percent of adult Americans say they prefer wine and 2O percent say they prefer liquor. Beer has been the top choice for adult Americans who drink alcoholic beverages in the past three years. Generally, 65 percent of adult Americans say they drink alcoholic beverages, while a quarter of them occasionally drink too much, found the poll. “Drinking remains a popular pastime for most Americans. For the nearly two in three Americans who imbibe, beer is consistently the preferred beverage of choice,” Gallup said in a report. Americans’ drink of choice differs by gender, as it has since the 199Os, Gallup found. Half of female American drinkers prefer wine, based on combined data from 2O1O to 2O16, while beer and liquor tie as their next-favored beverage, at 23 percent. Meanwhile, 54 percent of male drinkers name beer as their preferred drink, followed by liquor, 22 percent, and wine, 18 percent. It found that while one in four adult Americans drink too much sometimes, men (26 percent) do so more often than women (16 percent). This gender difference is largely the same from the previous decade – from 2OO1 to 2OO9.