Food delivery apps, cheaper-than-ever booze and the myth that wine is ‘healthier’ than spirits are fuelling a deadly liver disease crisis in the UK, experts have warned.
Alcohol-specific deaths – the majority of which involve liver disease – have risen sharply since the pandemic, climbing by more than 35 per cent since 2019.
oRecent research published in the prestigious Lancet journal found nearly 4,000 extra Britons died from booze-related reasons between 2020 and 2022, compared to the average two-year figure.
Scientists have noted that the rise has been the most significant among men and those from poorer backgrounds, however data also show a worrying uptick among middle-aged women.
Some experts have put the rise down to the Covid lockdowns, suggesting that the isolation encouraged heavy drinkers to drink more.
‘People who were already drinking at risky levels increased their consumption,’ Dr Melissa Oldham of the University College London Tobacco and Alcohol Research Group – one of the authors of the Lancet paper – told the Daily Mail.
However, there are other, lesser known yet intriguing factors that researchers say can be overlooked.
Alcohol is easier to get hold of than ever before
For decades we’ve been able to buy alcohol in countless shops and supermarkets, but fast-forward to 2026 and off-licenses are dispatching bottles of alcohol to homes on the back of a moped.
‘There’s growing concern in the public health community about rapid alcohol delivery services – where people can get drinks within 20 minutes or a couple of hours,’ says Dr Oldham.
‘They are definitely changing the scope of how and when people access alcohol.’
Campaigners are calling for tighter regulations – or outright bans – on apps that sell and deliver alcohol, with some grieving families claiming they are making alcoholism and addiction harder to manage and control.
In March, the sister of an alcoholic who was spending up to £1,500 a month on drink through delivery apps called for tighter controls on alcohol sales by food-delivery companies.
Mother-of-two Zoe Hughes, 35, was found dead at the bottom of her stairs in July 2023 after battling alcoholism for several years while struggling with personal problems.
Her family later discovered that her drinking had intensified as alcohol became increasingly easy to order online. In the months before her death, she had regularly used Just Eat, Deliveroo and Uber Eats to buy alcohol, even taking delivery of it when she was visibly intoxicated and at her most vulnerable.
Colin Angus, Professor of Alcohol Policy at the University of Sheffield who was also involved in the Lancet study, says that Britain’s access to alcohol often comes under the spotlight through the eyes of foreign visitors.
‘I’ve met alcohol researchers from overseas who had never visited the UK before, and they were astonished by just how easy it is to buy alcohol here,’ he tells the Daily Mail.
Alexandria Hughes (left) launched a petition after her sister Zoe (right) spent up to £1,500 a month on booze delivered directly to her home before her death
‘They were particularly shocked that it is sold in petrol stations.
‘Our team used market-research data to map every licensed premises in Great Britain. Covent Garden had the highest concentration anywhere in the country.
‘If you stood outside Covent Garden Underground station, there were more than 1,000 places selling alcohol within a one-kilometre radius.
‘Although the number of pubs has fallen since then, the availability of alcohol in shops has increased hugely.’
The sheer variety of alcohol has also surged, with beers, wines and spirits now nestling for attention with much stronger alcopops and premixed cocktails.
Experts – including Professor Angus – believe that the foundations of the crisis have been forming since the 1960s when licensing laws first began to change after wartime restrictions imposed at the turn of the century.
Slowly, alcohol became cheaper, easier to buy and more deeply embedded in everyday life.
In the 1960s pubs were tightly restricted by ‘permitted hours’ – they were typically allowed to serve alcohol for only nine hours from Monday to Saturday. Most opened from around 11am to 3pm, then shut before reopening between 5.30pm and 10.30pm. Sundays were even more limited, with pubs required to observe a five-hour afternoon closure.
Pubs in the 1960s were more male-centric
That began to change with the Licensing Act 1988, which abolished the compulsory afternoon break in England and Wales. For the first time since the First World War, pubs could remain open continuously from 11am to 11pm on weekdays and Saturdays. Sunday restrictions lasted longer, with continuous opening finally permitted following changes introduced in 1995.
Buying alcohol to drink at home was also far less convenient than it is today. In the early 1960s, most people relied on specialist off-licences, wine merchants or pub off-sales counters. But as supermarkets such as Sainsbury’s and Tesco secured alcohol licences, beer, wine and spirits became cheaper, more visible and easier to add to the weekly shop.
It’s cheaper than ever to drink
NHS figures released in 2024 revealed that alcohol is 91 per cent more affordable than it was in 1987.
This, says Professor Angus, is mostly driven by supermarkets offering cheaper prices than pubs and bars.
‘When you compare the prices in pubs to the prices in shops, they’re on completely separate trajectories,’ he explains.
‘As alcohol became much more available in shops, it also became much cheaper, and people have shifted their drinking from pubs to home.
‘It was maybe only 30 years ago that about three quarters of the alcohol sold in the UK was drunk in pubs. Now it’s drunk at home.’
But the cost disparity has changed not only how much we drink, but where – and for how long.
Most people are familiar with ‘pre-drinks’: having alcohol at home before a night out to avoid expensive bar and pub prices. But the growing availability of cheap, shop-bought alcohol has also encouraged a more significant cultural shift, with many people skipping the pub altogether and drinking at home instead.
‘There has been a huge cultural shift in where we’re drinking, and it is very difficult to say if it is because people prefer to drink at home or they do it because it is simply more affordable,’ says Professor Angus.
‘One major issue is that if people are drinking at home, there’s no hard stop to it.
‘If you were in a pub and subject to licensing rules, people are getting kicked out at last orders, but at home, people can just keep going.’
Women are drinking more… and are officially allowed in pubs
Until well into the 20th century, many British pubs treated the public bar as a male preserve, with women often expected to sit in a separate lounge or snug and receive table service.
Although this was not a universal legal ban, pubs could still operate discriminatory policies. In 1982, the Court of Appeal ruled that London drinkery El Vino’s policy of preventing women from standing at the bar and requiring them to sit in a back room was unlawful under the Sex Discrimination Act.
Today, millions of women think nothing of describing their personality as being a ‘wine mom’ and proudly fetishise drinking prosecco at every opportunity.
Hi, I’m Emma Bardwell, a nutritionist with more than 15 years’ experience helping people improve their health and lose weight.
I’ve been there. I was overweight, unhappy with my skin and stuck in a rut. Then I changed the way I eat. You can now do the same with my tried-and-tested healthy eating plan. And for DailyMail+ subscribers, it’s completely free.
<!- – ad: https://mads.dailymail.co.uk/v8/de/health/none/article/other/mpu_factbox.html?id=mpu_factbox_1 – ->
‘Looking at trends in liver disease, which are very highly correlated with alcohol, they have tripled in women,’ says Professor Angus, who adds that much of this can be traced back to the 1960s.
‘Back then, drinking for women was much rarer and a bit more taboo before slowly becoming more socially acceptable.
‘Drinking alcohol also started to move from being very much a thing that happens in pubs, which were very male-dominated, beery environments, to drinking at home, and wine became much more available.’
Speaking of wine, Professor Angus adds that he finds it astounding that wine is marketed so aggressively at women.
‘What is also striking is that alcohol is exempt from the nutritional labelling rules that apply to almost every other food and drink product,’ he explains.
‘Manufacturers do not have to list the ingredients or nutritional information, including calorie content. So, if you pick up a bottle of Heineken and a bottle of Heineken Zero in a supermarket, only the alcohol-free version has to tell you what is in it.
‘It is difficult to understand how we have ended up in that position without considering the influence of alcohol-industry lobbying.
‘I suspect one reason the industry resists clearer labelling is that it does not want people to realise just how many calories can be contained in a glass of wine.’ says.
![Andy Burnham: ‘I like to think I’ve got some personality ... I’ll deal with [Trump] very upfront’](https://static.independent.co.uk/2026/07/15/15/01KW9H586X3JHWJ1VVRJZWEZ7M.jpg)
You must be logged in to post a comment Login