Alcohol consumption is associated with long- and short-term consequences. Long-term health consequences include: alcohol-related diseases such as cirrhosis of the liver; stroke; high blood pressure; heart disease; and more than 60 cancers, including of the mouth, lips, throat, oesophagus, stomach, pancreas, liver, bowel and breast.

Short-term health consequences include fatalities, physical injury or road accidents due to impaired cognitive performance and diminished reaction times.

Social consequences may include domestic violence, absenteeism, violence and crime.

How much is safe to drink?

It’s important to know the recommendations on drinking to ensure we’re not drinking too much for our own health and for the safety of others.

In 2009, the National Health and Medical Research Council updated the Australian drinking guidelines. The guidelines contain four recommendations to ensure our drinking is “low risk”. Low risk is defined as drinking at a level that reduces the chance an individual will suffer from short-term injury or long-term disease.

Healthy men and women are advised not to drink more than two standard drinks on any one day. If a person drinks less than that, the probability he or she will suffer from long-term alcohol-related disease (such as cancer) is approximately one in 100.

For both men and women, drinking no more than four standard drinks on a single occasion reduces the risk of alcohol-related injury to one in 100. Risk of injury includes physical injury, or road accidents due to impaired cognitive performance and diminished reaction times.

Short-term risky drinking is most often associated with intoxication. Intoxication in its mildest form produces slight changes in inhibition, reduced co-ordination and decreased alertness. More extreme forms may involve slurred speech, boisterous or aggressive behaviour, inappropriate sexual behaviour, swaying, rambling conversation and difficulty concentrating.

Who can drink?

Pregnant women are advised to avoid alcohol because of the possibility of alcohol passing through the placenta into the embryo. This may affect brain and other developments of the child.

Evidence shows the brains of children under the age of 18 are still developing. Thus it is recommended children under the age of 18 should avoid consuming alcohol. Consuming alcohol before the age of 18 also increases the risk of numerous poor developmental and social outcomes.

Settings and their associated customs and norms can influence how much alcohol we consume. People will often consume more alcohol in settings like bars, nightclubs and sports clubs, for example. This is usually because alcohol in these settings is sold, managed and marketed in ways that encourage easier or greater consumption.

People should be aware of this phenomoneon and try to consciously consume moderate amounts in these types of settings.

Symptoms of drinking too much

While all drinking has elements of long- and short-term risk, consistent drinking can lead to dependence and other alcohol-related problems. If you find it hard to stop drinking after you have started, you do things that are not normally expected of you because of your drinking, or you feel you sometimes need a drink in the morning, you may be showing signs of dependence and should consult your GP or a health practitioner.

Another sign of dependence is that, over time, greater amounts of alcohol are required to achieve intoxication. Persistent use and being preoccupied with your consumption, despite evidence of harm, is another sign your drinking might be unhealthily habitual.

If you feel guilty after drinking, have injured someone because of your drinking, or someone has suggested you reduce your drinking, you should also consider talking to someone about your alcohol consumption.

Steps to reduce alcohol consumption

While alcohol is part of our world, we can reduce the risk of short-term harm, disease and dependence. For adults, it is advised you have no more than two standard drinks a day. On any one day it is advised adults should not consume more than four standard drinks in a session.

A good way to cut down on your drinking is to start by ensuring you are having at least one to two alcohol-free days. On these days, you may want to substitute an alcoholic drink with something else, like sugar-free tonic water. This has a sophisticated taste but has no calories or alcohol.

Because of the long- and short-term risks, there should always be room to reduce your alcohol consumption. Perhaps in the long term you could try to avoid consumption during weekdays.

When going to functions where alcohol will be available, have a strategy rehearsed in your mind as to how and why you will not consume alcohol. You may say it is one of your alcohol-free days, you are not drinking today, or you are pacing yourself this week.

People are more health-conscious these days so tend to be more open about not drinking for health and well-being reasons. A non-alcoholic substitute drink will help you feel more socially integrated in these settings.

We should also ensure our children avoid alcohol before the age of 18. This is the safest way of maximising their health and human potential.

Have you ever wondered how freshly baked bread gets its a golden brown crust and why it smells so good? Or how nondescript green berries turn into beautiful brown coffee beans with a rich alluring aroma?

The answers to these questions lie in a series of complex of chemical reactions, known as Maillard reactions, which give many foods their familiar flavours and colours. These sensory properties even guide us in how we choose foods and help create our initial perceptions of their quality.

As the name suggests, Maillard reactions were first described by a French physician and biochemist, Louis-Camille Maillard, in 1912. These reactions produce hundreds of chemical compounds that give colour and aroma to some of our favourite foods such as roast meat, potato chips, bread and other bakery products, coffee, chocolate and confectionery.

Maillard reactions occur between amine groups of amino acids or proteins and “reducing” sugars, such as glucose and fructose. These sugars are so named because they act as chemical reducing agents.

These reactions occur most rapidly under conditions of low moisture and at temperatures above about 130℃. Hence, they tend to kick in when we fry, bake, grill or roast.

Maillard reactions are also referred to as browning reactions because of the colour they impart to foods cooked in this way. When meat is grilled or roasted, only the surface is usually hot enough to cause browning. The interior can retain a pinkish colour because the cooking temperature stays below that required for Maillard reactions to occur rapidly.

Foods cooked by boiling or steaming do not turn brown or acquire the complexity of flavours because the temperature only reaches about 100℃. Likewise with cooking in a microwave oven.

The colour of chocolates, fudges and toffees are produced by the reaction of sugars with milk proteins.

The initial products of Maillard reactions are small volatile molecules, which are responsible for the aromas we get from freshly baked bread and coffee. More complex reactions then take place to form larger molecules responsible for the golden to brown colours. This is why the aroma of baking bread is sensed before the crust browns.

The later Maillard reactions are not well understood. We do know that some of the molecules they form have unpleasant flavours and may even be toxic, or the source of carcinogens that occur in charred meat.

The colour of flavour

A common misconception is that Maillard reactions are the same as caramelisation. Although both are favoured by conditions of low moisture, caramelisation occurs when sugars are heated to high temperatures in the absence of proteins. The common food flavour and caramel colour is produced by heating a mixture of glucose and sucrose to 160℃.

Maillard reactions don’t only take place in a hot oven though. They can also occur slowly at ambient temperature, resulting in gradual changes to aroma, flavour, colour, appearance, texture, shelf-life and nutritional value of stored foods.

In this way, Maillard reactions are responsible for the colour of honey, as well as deterioration during storage of dry goods such as flour and powdered milk. Maillard reactions are also implicated in the gradual loss of viability of seeds.

Maillard reactions can also have detrimental consequences. Unsightly blemishes may appear on chips after frying if their reducing sugar content exceeds 0.03% of dry matter. Potatoes destined for commercial chip production are carefully monitored to ensure reducing sugars are below this level.

An undesirable product of Maillard chemistry is acrylamide. This is a chemical that can be detected in tiny amounts in a range of fried or roasted foods, including potato chips, coffee, cocoa, chocolate and cereal-based bakery products, sweet biscuits and toasted bread (but not in steamed buns).

Acrylamide has been mentioned as a possible carcinogen, although according to Food Standards of Australia and New Zealand, the body that oversees the safety of our food, there is no direct evidence it causes cancer in humans. Acrylamide does not occur in raw foods or foods cooked by boiling or steaming.

Beyond the kitchen

Some aspects of the Maillard reaction have long been implicated in human ageing and health conditions.

Examples include loss of elasticity of connective tissue and the appearance dark spots on skin due to effects on collagen, cataract formation due to reactions with the lens protein crystallin, changes in neural proteins contributing to neuropathology and dementia, and glycation of haemoglobin due to elevated blood glucose levels in diabetes.

The importance of Maillard reactions in the kitchen and beyond is well established, even though these reactions are still not well understood more than a century after they were first described.

Nevertheless, we can take advantage of their benefits while continuing to learn about this fascinating area of chemistry