Projects & Research Partnerships

No/Lo Project

Evaluating and responding to the public health impact of no and low alcohol drinks: A multi-method study of a complex intervention in a complex system

Introduction

This project investigates whether non-alcoholic or low-alcohol drinks can improve people's health. These drinks are beers, ciders, wines, spirits that are alcohol-free or contain a little alcohol. We call them no/lo drinks.

No/lo drinks are increasingly popular, but whether they improve public health depends on many factors, such as:

who drinks them?
do people drink them instead of normal alcohol?
do they help or harm people in other ways?

For example, adverting no/lo drinks could also advertise normal alcoholic drinks made by the same company. This might harm people by encouraging them to drink more alcohol.

Adverts might also encourage children to drink earlier or make it harder for people with alcohol problems to stop drinking.

Many organisations are trying to make it easier to buy no/lo drinks, for example:

alcohol companies are making and advertising new drinks
the government charges less tax on no/lo drinks
some public health charities encourage people to try no/lo drinks if they want to reduce drinking

Each of these organisations also influences how the other organisations behave. We want to know more about what these organisations are doing to make no/lo drinks easier to buy. We also want to know how that influences health and what we could do in future to make sure that no/lo drinks improve health.

Work Packages

The project is split into four Work Packages (WP):

WP1 will describe what alcohol companies, the UK government and other organisations do to make no/lo drinks easier to buy. It will investigate different sources of information between 2011 and 2025. These include company documents, adverts and interviews with people such as civil servants and campaigners. It will also investigate how alcohol businesses use no/lo drinks to influence Government policy.

WP2 will investigate if making no/lo drinks easier to buy causes people to buy and drink less alcohol. It will use market research and a survey. These will show who buys no/lo drinks, how much they pay for them, and if people buy less alcohol if they buy no/lo drinks. It will also investigate how this has changed between 2016 and 2025.

WP3 will investigate how no/lo drinks might change how people drink and help or harm them in other ways. It will ask different groups about their experiences with no/lo drinks. These groups are young people, parents, pregnant women, people with alcohol problems and people who want to drink less. It will also use a survey to investigate why people drink no/lo drinks and if no/lo drinks help them to drink less.

WP4 will investigate if making no/lo drinks more common improves people's health and closes the gap in health between richer and poorer people. It will use a computer model that estimates how many people die or go to hospital due to alcohol each year. This model will also test how different ways of promoting no/lo drinks influence people's health.

Research team

The study is led by John Holmes, Professor of Alcohol Policy at the School of Medicine and Population Health at the University of Sheffield. The team includes colleagues from the University of Sheffield, University of Stirling and University College London (UCL), and has worked together for over ten years on research projects examining alcohol consumption and health.

Civil servants, public health charities and members of the public helped us to design this project. During the project, the public will also help to design and test our research materials, and interpret and share our results.

Key project information

This study is funded by the NIHR Public Health Research programme (NIHR135310). The views expressed are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of the NIHR or the Department of Health and Social Care.

Dates

July 2022 – December 2026

Funding

£2,190,613.62

Principal investigator

Professor John Holmes

Institutions involved

University of Sheffield
University of Stirling
University College London

Key contact

john.holmes@sheffield.ac.uk

Stay up to date with the latest news from the project by signing up for our email newsletter

No- and low-alcohol drinks in Great Britain: Monitoring report

Published January 2024

This report summarises key trends in the sales and consumption of no/lo drinks.

The report draws on our analyses of commercial market research data and our own survey data to provide a detailed description of the no/lo drinks market in Britain, who drinks these products and how that is changing over time.

It also offers insights into key topics including pricing, market concentration and differences between the off-trade and on-trade sectors.

Download report (PDF) Download data tables (XLSX)

Publications

Perman-Howe PR, Holmes J, Brown J, Kersbergen I (2024) Characteristics of consumers of alcohol-free and low-alcohol drinks in Great Britain: A cross-sectional study Drug and Alcohol Review DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/dar.13930

Critchlow N, Holmes J, Fitzgerald F (2024) Alibi marketing? Surrogate marketing? Brand sharing? What is the correct terminology to discuss marketing for alcohol-free and low-alcohol products which share branding with regular strength alcohol products? Addiction DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/add.16504

Holmes J, Angus C, Kersbergen I, Pryce R, Stevely A, Wilson L (2024) No- and low-alcohol drinks in Great Britain: Monitoring report Sheffield: University of Sheffield. DOI: 10.15131/shef.data.24893526 Download the accompanying data tables.

Other media

March 2024, Alcohol Alert – March 2024 John Holmes speaks on the Institute of Alcohol Studies podcast about alcohol-free and low-alcohol drinks.

January 2024, Are consumers paying a premium for no- and low-alcohol drinks? Colin Angus writes for the Society for the Study of Addiction's blog

January 2024, No- and low-alcohol drinks – a growing market that could change public health but challenges remain John Holmes writes for the Alcohol Change UK blog following the release of the No- and low-alcohol drinks in Great Britain: Monitoring report.