How do you calculate macros from alcohol? What is the real deal?! We break it down in simple terms!

We are bringing you #simplifiedscience on everything #alcohol - effects on your body, your nutrition, and how you can still be #onaquest with sound nutrition making sense of how alcohol and calories mix!

- FAST FACTS:

1. “A drink” is defined as:

• 12 oz beer

• 8oz malt liquor

• 5oz wine

• 1.5oz 80-proof spirits or liquor

2. “Binge drinking” is defined as:

• Men: 5 or more drinks in a single session

• Women: 4 or more drinks in a single session

3. “Heavy drinking” is defined as:

• Men: 15 or more drinks per week

• Women: 8 or more drinks per week

The key is responsible drinking in moderation! Now, let’s dive into nutrition and how alcohol fits:

- ALCOHOL AND NUTRITION:

How to track

o 7kCal/gram for alcohol (EtOH), but some drinks do contain carbs

o Technically broken down like fat, but metabolized more as a carb

o It’s conceptually similar by saying track fiber, starch, and sugar separately. We don't differentiate each one separately, though we could, because ultimately, we categorize it all as a carb due to how the body is using it.

- HOW TO ACCURATELY TRACK:

o Example: Michelob Ultra has 95kcal and “2.6g of carbs;” that’s 10.4kcal, so where’s the remaining 84.6kcal coming from?

 Nutrition label doesn’t list EtOH, so gets away with this

o Calorieking.com has EtOH listed, so for this beer it has 11.9g of EtOH

 11.9g x 7 = 83.3kcal, which makes up the remaining difference

 There’s a trace amount of protein to completely count everything

o You could take calories and divide into fat (9) or carb grams (4) or both

o ***SIMPLE SOLUTION: I would just take kcals and divide by 4 (carbs) to yield 23.75g; logging only fat would yield 10.5g; and a combo of each would yield 11.9g of carbs and 5.25g of fat

o Example: vodka with 146kcal = 36.5g of carbs OR 146kcal = 16.2g of fat OR combo of each (18.25g of carbs and 8.1g of fat)

- SUGAR ALCOHOLS RECAP:

o Sugar alcohols can raise an individual’s blood sugar albeit much lower, so they still need to be counted as carbs (~2kcal/g)

o Just because something doesn’t exert an insulin response doesn’t mean it’s free of calories (mention stress, sleep, thoughts)

 Side note: too much of these can have a laxative effect or other GI disturbances!

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