Implications for research and policy
non-alcoholic
This study suggests that increasing the available non-alcoholic options and reducing the available alcoholic options has the potential to meaningfully reduce selection and purchasing of alcohol. Although there was some evidence of a reduction in alcohol selected and purchased when half of the options available were non-alcoholic, effects were only consistently observed when non-alcoholic drinks became the majority. Currently, supermarkets typically stock a wider range of alcoholic than non-alcoholic alternatives to alcohol, and these results suggest that if non-alcoholic options were to become the majority instead, we might expect to see substantial reductions in alcohol purchasing. As it is yet to be seen if such major changes in ranges of drinks are feasible in real-world settings, these findings are most reasonably interpreted as proof of principle, rather than able to directly inform policy options. It is plausible that this situation could rapidly change, however. The increase in popularity of alcohol-free drinks is relatively recent, with the global market growing substantially in the last 4 years, and in the UK, it is forecast to continue to increase [This intervention simultaneously increased the number of non-alcoholic drinks and decreased the number of alcoholic drinks while the overall number of drinks remained constant. It is unclear whether the effect is predominantly driven by one or the combination of these changes. Further studies are needed to disentangle this and investigate potential mechanisms more broadly, noting that there is some preliminary exploration of possible mechanisms in food contexts [