Close

Photo: Getty Images / Maren Caruso

Walk down the aisles at the grocery store and you’ll notice pretty much everything has a nutrition label. The exception? Alcohol. We consume alcohol and it contributes calories to our bodies, but you wouldn’t know that from reading the label on the bottle. Ever wonder why alcohol won’t tell you the ingredients or calories inside the bottle? We have the scoop below.

Health Benefits of Drinking Wine

The History

In 2013, the TTB madelabels optionalif manufacturers wanted to include them, but not required. This led some alcohol brands to use nutrition as a means of marketing, without any consistent means of comparison between products (think beer commercials calling out high-fructose corn syrup or just how low they are in carbs).

There are, however, some things that must be labeled on alcohol:

Why It Matters

There are pros and cons to the idea of putting nutritional information on alcoholic beverages, and both sides have avid supporters.

Pros to adding nutrition labels to alcohol:

Excess calorie consumption can come from many things, and one area of our diets that is sometimes overlooked is alcohol. TheAmerican Journal of Public Healthfound that the among American adults who drink alcohol, the average person consumes around 300 calories daily from booze (about 16% of your daily calories on a 2,000-calorie diet). Nutrition labeling may help people become more aware of serving sizes and how alcohol can add to daily calorie intake.

Cons to adding nutrition labels to alcohol:

In order to create a Nutrition Facts label, each variation of each product must have a sample sent to an authorized lab for nutrition analysis. This is an expensive and time-consuming process and would be tricky to do with vintage wine and special craft beer.

Another major critique of including a nutrition label on alcohol is that it could make it seem more like a food than a drug. For example, it would be counterproductive to have someone comparing the calories and carbs in bread with that of a glass of wine. For this reason, many advocacy groups, such as theCenter for Science in the Public Interest, have stated that labels on alcohol should include facts like alcohol percentage, serving size and calories, while excluding nutrients that make them seem comparable to food.

Calorie Counts for Alcoholic Beverages

It may seem obvious that, even though they don’t have a label, alcoholic beverages contain calories. Alcohol contains 7 calories per gram (fat has 9 calories/gram and carbs and protein deliver 4 calories/gram). The surprising part is how quickly those calories can add up. Calories may vary depending on ingredients and production processes (and don’t forget the calories in mixers!), but here are some common calorie counts for usual serving sizes of several alcoholic beverages:

Bottom Line

With rising concerns about ingredients in alcoholic beverages, a nutrition label could illuminate what each product actually contains. However, requiring the label would raise production costs for small-scale manufacturers, winemakers and brewers. For now, the debate continues and alcohol stays without a nutrition label.

How Much Alcohol Should You Be Drinking?

Was this page helpful?Thanks for your feedback!Tell us why!OtherSubmit

Was this page helpful?

Thanks for your feedback!

Tell us why!OtherSubmit

Tell us why!