The ‘Dry January’ campaign, which urges the UK public to abstain from alcohol for the month following the festive period, has caused drinks sales in the nation’s supermarkets to plummet, from accounting for an average of nine per cent of sales values to just 4.6 per cent, thesun.co.uk reports.
The figures were amassed and crunched by price-comparison website mySupermarket, which remarked that Dry January has been “gaining momentum” over the last number of years.
Ian Hamilton, a researcher in the Department of Health Sciences, University of York, however, suggested that an “abrupt abstention from alcohol” could be seizure-inducing for people who ordinarily consume it copiously.
“Parched of evidence,” he wrote, “Dry January could have unintended consequences which would do more harm than good.”
© 2016 European Supermarket Magazine – your source for the latest retail news. Article by Peter Donnelly. To subscribe to ESM: The European Supermarket Magazine, click here.
