Drink Without Breaking Your Belt

In a world of ever-expanding waistlines, more and more people are becoming concerned with the food and drink that they are putting into their bodies.  Does this mean that you have to become a teetotaler or ascetic to maintain your health and good looks?  No, it just means making some wise decisions about what you serve your guests and yourself.  For most dinner tables, the alcoholic beverage of choice is beer or wine, unless you are dining in Russia, where vodka shots are a a culinary necessity. 

Calories and alcohol-

First some basics.  Consuming more calories than you burn in your daily activities is the baseline equation for weight gain.  The 3 macronutrients in foods; fat, carbohydrate, and protein, are the main source of calories for the body.  However, alcohol, which not any of these 3, is a source of calories as well.  Each gram of alcohol contains 7 calories according to the calculations of Shapefit.com.  That doesn't seem so bad until you realize that it is only second to fat in calories per gram.  Protein and the much maligned carb have 4 calories per gram and fat has 9 calories per gram.  Drinking is therefore  going to have to be calorically expensive.  Especially when you consider that according to the CDC, The Center for Disease Control and Prevention, a standard drink (5 ounces of wine and 12 ounces of beer) has 14 grams of alcohol.  With no other macronutrients, then, a standard drink has at least 98 calories per serving.  However, beer and wine do have other macronutrients, mainly carbohydrates.  Generally, however, wines have far fewer carbs than beers, because they have amount of the sugary carbohydrates being converted into alcohol during the fermentation process, resulting in their higher alcohol content.

Low calorie alcohol-

According to the ingenious website Get Drunk, Not Fat, the lowest calorie to alcohol content drink that isn't a liquor is Franzia box wine.  Unless you are planning on taking shots at the dinner table a la Russian table etiquette or are entertaining at a discotech, it seems that wine would be the choice of calorie conscious hosts. Of course even if you were drinking the harder stuff at dinner, spirits will usually be cloaked in calorie laden mixed drinks.  Even the crisp and unsweet gin and tonic far outstrips a glass of wine in calories.  A whole bottle of wine is only about 500 calories while two gin and tonics will begin tipping the scales at about 480 according to The Alcoholism Guide.

Beer, however, is the worst offender.  Even a crisp pint of Stella Artois will set you back as much as a half bottle of wine.  Even though it is considered a light beer, a pint of Bud Light (which is commonly drunk by the pitcher) is 227 calories.

Caveats-

Not all wines are created equal, however.  Standard reds and whites weigh in at about 90 calories per serving, but watch it on the more exotic dessert wines or ports.  Although it is usually consumed very moderately, watch your intake of sweet dessert wines.  They weigh in at 105 calories for every 4 ounces.  Port, too, can make you portly as every 2 ounces packs a 90 calorie wallop.  See a list of wine types and their colories at College Drinking Prevention.

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