One of the things that interests me is that, by all accounts, people used to drink ENORMOUS amounts of alcohol prior to the 20th century. The most common figure

One of the things that interests me is that, by all accounts, people used to drink ENORMOUS amounts of alcohol prior to the 20th century. The most common figure I saw is that Americans used to drink like 7 gallons of PURE alcohol per year. That's 26 liters of pure alcohol. I dunno what beer is like in the US, in Switzerland 4.5% alcohol content is standard. So they were drinking like 577 liters of beer a year, 1.6 l per day. 500kcal or so (so like 1/5 of reference for a "normal" man) coming from alcohol.