Recent research by the Department of Health revealed that a man drinking five pints a week - the equivalent of 250 pints a year - would be consuming the same amount of calories as someone who got through 221 doughnuts in a year! We’ll leave you to work out the doughnut count if five pints is how much you drink in a night rather than a week.

So if you are drinking moderate amounts of beer each week, what would you have to do to burn off all these excess calories? Thirteen minutes running on the treadmill or playing football; fifteen minutes cycling or 20 minutes swimming; half an hour on the golf course are what a typical man would have to do to burn off the average 200 calories in a pint.

It’s not really surprising then, that while a man might go to the gym two or three times a week, play five-a-side, or join in a round of golf, drinkers can still find it difficult to get rid of that paunch.

Most men would baulk at sitting down and eating four or five 200-calorie packets of crisps after work. Well, shockingly enough, if you go out and have four or five pints, you’re consuming the same number of calories. No wonder the Michael Phelps-style six-pack is still a pipe dream...

With seven calories per gram, alcohol has almost the same calorie content as pure fat! Yet alcohol has no nutritional value, and despite its calorific content, may actually make you feel hungrier instead of less, as it lowers your blood sugar.