Calorie Content of Alcohol
How can we determine the Calorie Content of Alcohol?
Celebration is an essential part of life — weddings, parties, holidays and vacations and Alcohol is usually present in these times. Some of us drink occasionally, others regularly and others rarely. But how much is too much? How can we determine the Calorie content of alcohol and how does it affect our body?
When we drink alcohol, the body converts the majority of it into acetate (a source of energy) which is then released to the bloodstream and is used as a primary source of fuel, but a small portion gets converted to fat. This seems great because we are using alcohol as a source of energy but the truth is; it harms the body.
Instead of using our stored fat and burning it to fuel alcohol substitutes it, keeping it in the body and the unused calories from alcohol consumption also become stored as fat. This is the reason people get fat when they drink regularly.
Now that you know how alcohol affects the body, you should know the amount of alcohol that you are consuming by knowing the Calorie Content of Alcohol.Since there are too many variations and contents from beers, hard liquors, wines and mixed cocktails. Some kinds of alcohol even put different liquids like (red bull, tonic and juices) others have fruits and sugar mixed into them; this makes it almost impossible to give a specific calorie content of all the individual alcoholic drinks.
However there are approximate measurements of the most popular types of drinks in three categories: Beer, Hard liquor and Wines. The measurements that I will give you are taken from the 2005 U.S. Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee; they claim that their measurements are based on the “typical recipe of each drink”.
Beer
There are three types of beer currently sold in the market: Light, Regular and Dark beer. The measurements are based on 12 ounces per serving.The Light beer has the lowest number of calories it only has 110 while regular and dark beers have almost the same amount, regular beer has 150 while Dark beer has 168 calories.Normally the difference between regular and dark beer is taste. The darker one is stronger and has more “flavor”.
Wines
There are many types of wine but the five most common wines according to the committee are the following: dry dessert wine, sweet dessert wine, red wine, white wine and sparkling white wine. (One serving is measured at 5 ounces)
The dessert wines have the most calories, obviously the sweet dessert wine has the highest number of calries because it has the highest amount of sugar among the drinks; one serving of sweet dessert wine has 344 calories while dry dessert wine has 198 calories only.
The table wines have the lowest number of calories among the different types of alcohol. The three common table wines have almost identical amount of calories. One serving of white wine has 100 calories; red wine has 105 calories and white sparkling wine has 106 calories.
Hard liquor
There are many types of hard liquor and they are manufactured in different parts of the world and most of them are used for mixed drinks and because of this the committee has given the following drinks a standard amount of calories. Gin, Scotch, vodka, bourbon and rum have been placed at a standard amount of 100 calories per 1.5 ounces of serving.
Now that you know the calorie content of the most common drinks always remember that the calorie content of alcohol that I have mentioned are based solely on the alcohol and do not include other substances mixed into to it.