A recent workshop drawing medical chiefs and nutritionists from breweries and guilds focused on the health impacts from hitting the bottle.

Alcohol is regarded in China as a traditional stimulus of inspiration especially among intellectuals. People like drinking hard spirits to invigorate the brain and to help resist fatigue.

Medical experts accept wine could reduce the chance of cardiovascular diseases but how to avoid the damage caused by excess drinking of other alcohol is still an open question, Monday's China Daily quoted Zheng Chaoqiang from China Microcirculation Institute.

"China's traditional spirits may cause all-round damage to the health of heavy drinkers," Feng Zhiyi, a researcher with the Chemistry and Pharmaceutical College of the Jiamusi University was quoted as saying.

Epidemiological surveys show that ten percent of the global population are suffering from fatty livers, some 57.7percent of which were generated from insobriety, and a quarter of fatty liver cases will turn into alcoholic hepatitis or hepatocirrhosis.

More and more Chinese youths in their 20s and 30s were found suffering from liver damage during the past decade, said Feng.

Experts agreed drinking in moderation was the best choice for drinkers, but diverged on what is an acceptable level of consumption, which ranges from 24 to 80 milliliters per day.

Most breweries have reduced the ratio of alcohol from the previous level of 65 percent to today's less than 40 percent in their products to meet the consumers' dwindling demand.

Zhuang Yukun, director of a brewery in northeast Heilongjiang Province, raised the concept of "healthy liquor" at the workshop by dissolving kinds of traditional Chinese medicine to minimize the damage on liver.

(eastday.com December 24, 2001)