Did you know alcoholic beverages are the only food or drink we consume that is not required to have a?nutrition?label? ?How did this come to be? ?Well let me just say, there's a lot of inefficient and convoluted government regulation to blame. ?If you want to read in-depth the many factors that have made labeling the nutrition stats of alcohol fail to occur, click here. ?To sum it up: its largely because alcohol is not regulated by the same people who regulate food.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is responsible for our food and, therefore, for the?nutrition?labels that adorn everything we eat and drink. ?Alcohol, however, has been under the care of the?Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives?while the labeling of alcohol has been under the control of?The Treasury Department's Alcohol and Tobacco Trade and Tax Bureau (TTB). ?They've felt the heat from consumer groups to implement nutrition labels on alcohol, but they also feel heat from the alcohol industry who says it is hard to put a calorie count on a drink because drinks like wine and beer ferment and change their?constitution?over time (the alcohol content and sugar content of what you drink is different from what it was when that drink first came to be). ?Producers of liquor claim that it is nearly impossible to put a calorie count on a mixed drink because they have no control over how accurately a bartender pours a drink or what garnishes may be added.
So the fight goes on, the government is stalemated, and for now we're left to fend for ourselves to "guess-timate" how many calories we consume when we drink beer, wine, or liquor. ?The easiest way I've found to track calories from alcohol: use one of the many catalogs available online for tracking calories. ?These catalogs have every food or drink imaginable (from grocery stores to take-out to restaurants and bars, they have it all). ?
The one I use to track my calories is MyFitnessPal. ?Pick the blue tab at the top of the page labeled "Food". ?It will bring up a sub-menu. ?From there choose "Database."
That will open up a window with a search bar where you can type in any food or drink to retrieve nutritional information. ?
As an example, let's search "Chardonnay Wine." ?You can see it brings up a list of wines from various vineyards. ?It also brings up a generic chardonnay wine option. ?I can click the best match in the search results on the left, and it will show me nutrition stats on the right. ?From there you can adjust your serving size, as well as how many servings you drank, and get a total calorie count.
You can even search various mixed drinks. ?Here's the results for an Appletini.
Of course, I can not emphasize enough that these are estimates. ?When it comes to wine and beer,?manufactures?rarely publish their?nutritional information. ?And I can't deny the alcoholic beverage industry has a point in that, when it comes to mixed drinks, you never know what kind of pour you're going to get from the bartender. ?Still, keeping a rough estimate is better than not keeping one at all. ?
Some other things to check out if you're counting calories while drinking:
Hope this helps you count! ?Bottoms up!
Information cited in this article comes from the following sources:
The Daily Beast: Pick your Poison
Food Politics:?Nutrition labeling of wine, beer, and spirits: a regulatory morass
Livestrong.com: Who Regulates Nutrition Labels
Source: http://onehappylife82.blogspot.com/2012/02/tracking-alcohol.html
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