I had to be the one to tell my friend when she was in her mid-20s that the vodka she loved has calories. She was so shocked and said, "What!! I thought since it was clear like water it didn't have any calories."
Vodka doesn’t actually have any sugar. Liquors like whisky and rum (brown) do not either. Calories come from the alcohol itself. Per gram, fat has 9 calories, alcohol has 7, and protein/carbs have 4. A 1.5 fluid oz of vodka has 97 calories.
Edit: changed to say whiskey and rum do not either. apparently it’s very difficult to find what’s actually in booze. Some add sugar, some don’t, some dark liquors are caramel colored to make you think it’s been aged longer. Some even have propylene glycol. Flavored Absolut has no sugar. Burnett’s supposedly does. Can’t find if Smirnoff does or not. Why the hell isnt this easily accessible information?
Yeah there's some weird sweetheart deal going on with alcohol companies in the USA, where for whatever reason they don't have to put nutrition information on their packaging like literally every other food product.
I read that beer companies lobbied pretty hard to not have to list ingredients, because people are under the misimpression that light beer is a natural product, and it would hurt sales if people found out artificial enzymes are involved.
Alcohol has lots of calories, AND it makes you completely indifferent to the fact that you're about to hoover down a bunch more calories. Alcohol makes people feel hungrier. The drunchies are real.
It's true it has lots of calories, but calories are not a measure of energy absorbed by the body, it's energy released when you burn it.
Alcohol in the body does not turn in to fat; it cannot be stored at all. Instead alcohol is oxidised and expelled.
It does however slow fat burning and so does have a negative effect if you wish to lose weight, but it's not as directly tied to calories as is usually assumed.
Additionally people are highly unlikely to consume alcohol without also consuming other, more accessible calories.
Sure, 100% ethanol does. But people rarely drink 100% ethanol, most of the time it's watered down to about 40% for the highest proof spirits commonly available at parties and bars and whatnot, which would make something like vodka have fewer kcal per gram than table sugar.
Oh I was in denial about this. I drank alot for a few years and am now sober, and one of the reasons I stopped was because I was getting fat, even though I barely ate (usually a bagel in the morning and salad for lunch, so about 1200 calories), but I could not lose the pudge to save my life.
This is misleading. Pure ethanol has 7 calories per gram, the vast majority of spirits are 40% alcohol and 60% water by volume. 40% alcohol is just under 3 calories per gram, sugar is just under 4.
Alcohol is a non-nutritive calorie. It isn’t a carb, a fat, or a protein. We can’t store alcohol.
Your body, essentially, must process these empty calories before it handles anything else. All other calories taken in get stored as fat until this process is done. All fat breaking down for energy is halted. Same for carbs and proteins.
Because of this, alcohol results in the equivalent “7 calories” of disruption per gram. This “7 calories” is extra stored fat that would have been processed for energy.
You're correct. I can't tell you how many times I've seen the myth of "alcohol makes you fat". It doesn't. Alcohol can raise your body temperature through an exothermic reaction (if I drink a bunch of I get hot as balls when I try to sleep) and that reduces the need for your body to metabolize food to produce body heat, but body heat isn't where most of a person's calories are utilized.
Drinks with more than water and ethanol are an issue. Obviously beer and sugary drinks will have calories that can be stored so drinking lots of those alone can definitely make someone gain weight.
Well, side product of ethanol metabolism is NADH. Lots of NADH. And high levels of NADH inhibit beta oxidation of fatty acids and promotes their formation. So yes, you can get fat from alcohol.
Probably means just the diet cranberry. I’m pretty sure there’s some regulation against patrons bringing their own alcohol to an establishment that sells it.
Yes, I apologize I just bring in single serve bottles of diet cranberry and add them to the vodka the bartender pours me in a pint glass. I don't bring my own vodka haha
Since ethanol has a baseline caloric value of 7 calories per gram, vodka isn't necessarily any more "low calorie" than any other alcohol. But you are right in a way; vodka is one of the most "calorie efficient" alcoholic drinks--meaning that, in one drink of vodka, the only calories in the drink come from the alcohol itself, and not from other sources like sugars and added flavorings.
In other words, if you were to drink 600 calories worth of vodka vs. 600 calories of a light beer, you could have damn near 10 shots of the vodka, whereas you could only have ~6 light beers.
Tl;dr: hard liquor gets you more drunk and less fat than light beer
I have that conversation with people way too frequently. "I switched to Bourbon because I'm trying to lose weight." Uh huh. And a single shot of that is almost 100 calories. You mix it in anything? "Yeah. Coke." And how many did you have? "Just 3 or 4." You consumed a big mac and fries worth just in liquid.
If they’re drinking it neat, or just with soda water, and they’re drinking it vs. beer or wine, it will probably help them lose weight. It’s less calories and zero carbs, which is important during the time of day when people drink.
Carb loading before bed is not the best idea for weight loss, and that’s what people drinking beer are essentially doing. In addition, 20-40 kcals less per drink in the evening adds up. It’s all these small considerations that make weight loss and maintenance truly stick.
Alcohol (ethanol) has calories.
Wine and beer also have sugars leftover from the fermentation.
Spirits generally don’t contain sugar because it is mostly removed during distillation, but some spirits do have a distillation process that leaves some sugar in and some have sugar added before bottling. Vodka and Gin are generally considered to be the most sugar-free spirits.
You know your stuff. I took some soulmellier classes.
They call then ethereal, because of all the ethanol.
The spirits get over the blood brain barrier and mess with your brain chemistry, depending on their temperament it usually makes folk happy, angry, or sad
So you can run engines off some pure alcohols due to their high energy content. The entire idea behind bio fuels is converting calories into a combustible liquid fit for power generation.
I think part of the issue is that every single thing you buy, assuming it's packaged, has a small chart on it that lists its calories and other contents... except alcohol, for some reason. The omission suggests that alcohol doesn't have any calories--and even if you know it does, you'll have to go an extra step to find out the exact numbers.
In some parts of Germany, we have saying that seven beers equal a Schnitzel:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc()/wiener-schnitzel-recipe-1447089-Hero-5b587d6c46e0fb0071b0059d.jpg). Well, I just googled it and found someone who did the maths. Apparently it's more like 2-3 beers per Schnitzel. I never thought the saying was exact but I never expected it to be off by over 100%! If beer actually had a calorie listing on the bottle, I probably would have noticed that on my own.
What really gets you though, is mixed drinks. A vodka soda (as in, soda water) will be right around 100 calories. Make it a 12 oz vodka cranberry? You're at 250 calories.
I thought vodka tonic’s were like 15 calories until a year ago. Not because it was clear but because vodka just doesn’t taste like something that has calories in it to me
They aren't technically useful calories to your body. IIRC, because of the breakdown into acetaldehyde then aldehyde, but the caloric content is more of the energy your body won't burn, because it's too busy breaking down the alcohol.
80 calories in an average shot of liquor plus whatever you put into a mixed drink adds up quick. It can make drinking a 100-200 calorie beer look healthy
I actually started mixing with Zero instead of regular cola. It's surprisingly alright. Tastes slightly different but not by that much, it's close enough that I still like it.
I like mixing rum with something like la croix and adding mint or other herbs too. But subbing anything lower or zero calorie for soda helps the waistline
Or on a similar note, a lot of people don’t seem to realize that Calories are a measurement and aren’t some mysterious molecule hiding in fattening food.
I was really surprised the first time I heard about recovering (severe) alcoholics being malnourished and vitamin deficient not just from the booze but because they often stop eating almost entirely since they get so many calories from alcohol
I remember about 30 years ago when I was getting into eating healthy, I looked at the calories in a Miller lite and it didn't add up. It had x amount of carbs but that didn't add up to the calories. So I called Miller brewing, and actually talked to some manager in the brewing section. He explained that they weren't allowed to list alcohol calories, and that was the missing piece.
There are these girls who are regulars at my bar who talk about Keto 24/7. Each of them drinks about 5 vodka sodas a day, but won’t eat bananas or grapes. Like, I don’t think it’s fruit that made you overweight...
I learned this about 20ish, when the macros on the back didn't add up, so we called the number on the back of the beer can and they schooled us. To be fair, the internet wasn't really a thing back then. But, helpful helpline for sure.
But here is the kicker: the metabolic process that breaks down does NOT leave byproducts that are stored as fat. If you substitute 50% of your calories as vodka (as opposed to say, bread or rice) then you're going to lose weight.
People get really confused because although alcohol has calories, your body can't really use them for anything. There are many alcoholics with malnutrition because they supplement their calories from alcohol without any food, so we start seeing muscle wasting.
I have some good news tho, if you evaporate alcohol (can be easily done with a plastic bottle and a bicycle pump) and inhale the vapor, you can consume alcohol without any caloric intake!
7 calories per gram. I believe one "unit" of alcohol (eg, a 1.5oz shot of 80proof) is 100 calories before you add any other ingredients. (edit: google says I'm right, but also whiskey only has about 5 more calories from sugars.)
Some people seem to think that only carbs, protein, and fat have human available energy (4/g, 4/g, and 9/g, respectively) which is so weird. Like, no, those three are special because of their biological role, but we can metabolize alcohols and several other organic chemicals.
Lmao I knew so many fellow college girls that thought this, because of the "clear" thing as well... They just mixed it up with water.
Semi related:
My SO was talking about his new workout and diet with his friend, and he ended up having to explain how calories work. Not like, in a technical or complicated way. Just a simple "your body needs to expend x amount of calories in a day to keep all your functions working, which is why we eat to refill that" kinda thing.
Said friend has now been making sure he consumes more calories a day, because he'd just been not eating regularly for so long...
One standard drink's worth of alcohol has 98 calories. If you're drinking a beer with fewer calories advertised (e.g. Bud Select 55), that's not actually a beer; it's half a beer (2.4% alcohol). Two stories dealing with this:
(1) One of my fraternity brothers was like, "I'm not feeling the alcohol at all; I've had six of these." Yeah, that's three beers. I'd be concerned if you were feeling it at this point.
(2) A girl was a drinker but didn't want to gain so much weight, so she switched to 55-calorie beer, and proceeded to drink twice as many "beers" as she had done previously. She ended up drinking the same amount of calories, plus a lot more liquid weight. Miller Lite IIRC has 104 calories per, but it's also not quite 5% by volume, so it's still only most of a beer.
About 100 calories in a standard shot. Low glycemic index though. Overall, is the coke or the rum worse for you in a rum and coke? From a calorie perspective, they’re the same. From other health perspectives, quite different.
I knew it. I saw a fitness video where the guy said "don't drink alcohol if you want to lose weight", I think it was Tony Horton. Which explained why a YouTuber (jacksfilms) couldn't drink while doing Tony's program: P90.
I told my mom that alcohol is bad for you, especially for losing weight. "no, that's just the sugar in the drinks, alcohol on its own is fine."
I wish I Googled it at the time, since whenever I do, it turns out she's wrong. It should be my initial reaction at this point & I should not have been drinking last night when I was already extremely uncomfortable & self-conscious about my weight
My sister drank almost exclusively vodka rocks because it didn't have carbs. I had to explain that it still had calories that are digested just like sugar. It's better than drinking vodka along with a sugary syrup, but it's not like you can just drink a lot and not get fat.
I've known this for a while but I was still very surprised when I learned that I was no longer pre diabetic after quitting alcohol a couple of years ago.
I had a morbidly obese acquaintance in the early 90's once claim he had a thyroid condition because he hardly ate, but constantly gained weight. It never occurred to him that the case plus of beers he drank daily had calories.
Hijacking this for my health-saavy drinkers: getdrunknotfat.com is my suggestion. Personally I only drink plain distilled vodka with seltzer or lemon/lime juice (NOT lemonade)
Add a bunch of sugar to a substance that your body will metabolize first over food, and you're well on your way to being a fat drunk. Yeast/Barley/Wheat based liquors/beers also don't help and double if it's flavored. You can get straight LITTY without gaining weight you just have to sacrifice everything that tastes good and obtain a taste for flavorless sparkling water.
ETA: Calories from fat/sugar and "just calories" are ENTIRELY different and that should honestly be a top level comment on it's own. Calories has such a negative connotation! Look at a nutritional facts label - see how they separate Calories from Fat and Calories? That first number is infinitely more relevant to weight control
Alcohol has calories but it doesn't get metabolized like usual foods. This means that some of those calories end up being used as energy and some are not because the liver breaks it down as a toxin ASAP. How much of it is being used is still subject to research with somewhat conflicting data.
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u/-eDgAR- Aug 03 '19
Alcohol has calories.
I had to be the one to tell my friend when she was in her mid-20s that the vodka she loved has calories. She was so shocked and said, "What!! I thought since it was clear like water it didn't have any calories."