| Introduce topic by describing, activity name, content standard, and objectives. Start by asking the participants the following questions: -How many types of alcoholic beverages are there? What are they? -Do they have the same amount of alcohol per volume? -Are there different types of drinkers? -Is there more or less tolerance by different type of individuals? How? Why? Inform the participants that you are asking those questions to get a sense if participants are aware of how alcohol content is measured and how it affects our bodies. Ask participants if they know what BAC stands for. Inform the participants that we will practice how to read alcohol content in drinks in order to make informed decisions next time we are drinking. The World Health Organization says that harmful drinking is a drinking pattern that causes harm to the physical or mental health, which is defined as the regular average consumption of 40g of alcohol a day for women and more than 60g a day for men. Ask the participants, "What do you think about that?"; "How many beers do you think this amount of alcohol corresponds to?" Tell the participants that, according to the same organization, learning to read the concentration of alcohol in a drink is quite simple. First, most alcoholic beverages describe right on the bottle the percentage of alcohol in grams. That number is the amount of pure alcohol per 100 cubic centimeters of beverage. Therefore a standard drink is approximately 13g of alcohol. Give each participant a copy of the chart of blood alcohol concentration. This chart contains some of the most common symptoms according to the level of alcohol concentration and the impact they have on the driving ability. Ask participants to read all the boxes of the chart and analyze the information. After analyzing the chart, show the participants the BAC calculator on the screen and do several examples. Say that, according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, two people can drink the same amount of alcohol in the same period of time, with different results on the breath test, because it also depends on body size, percentage of body fat and gender. The BAC calculator provides an approximation to the real content of alcohol in the blood stream. For the most part you only need to type in the number of drinks and what type of drink they are, your gender, your weight and the amount of hours you have been drinking. This calculator will provide an analysis of your approximate BAC, and how long it will take until you have zero blood alcohol concentration (sober). As a culminating activity, have volunteers to describe at least 2 different scenarios: one shows an office party in which they are serving only wines. The second scenario could be a wedding in which they are serving all types of alcohol beverages. Add that in each event you can only stay one hour. Instruct participants to figure out how many alcoholic drinks they can drink safely without affecting their ability to drive home. |