Weight Loss Blog: What Makes Americans Fat?, Part 4

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Do you believe all those slender people in the beer commercials?

We refused to believe this statistic: Beer adds a whopping 43,050 calories per year. That number – 22 days of recommended food calories for a woman, and 17 days for a man – is simply beyond comprehension. And that’s the average for each American 15 and older. We had such a hard time believing these alcohol consumption statistics from our government’s National Institutes for Health that we cross checked them against the beer-consumption statistics from the beer Brewers Association.

9.4 oz beer per American – or ¾ of a can – every day

We are the last to argue for prohibition. But …

Since prohibition hasn’t and won’t work, here are a few simple ideas that will work if you’re not an alcoholic. The bottom line is moderation:

• Before you have your first beer, at home or at a bar, drink a full glass of water. The water intake will lessen your thirst and will, to some degree, replace the desire to drink beer.
• Switch to wine, especially in a bar. Wine is more expensive, and calorie content per serving is a little less (123 calories in a 6 oz wine serving versus 150 calories in a 12 oz beer can.  The switch to wine makes more sense in a bar setting than at home.
• Don’t drink every day. This makes not only sense from a calorie perspective, but it also keeps you out of AA!
• Don’t drink alone.
• Don’t drink before a certain time (like dinner time).

There are many more reasons than calories to take it easy with beer.

Ah, you say, I only drink wine or spirits. Well, in the end wine and spirits are as fattening as beer. Actually, the NIH statistics show that we drink as much alcohol from wine and spirits combined as we drink from beer. Surprisingly, alcohol consumption has stayed fairly stable over the past 150 years, with the exception of the period of Prohibition and the following decade. But remember, demand for black market alcohol was pretty high during Prohibition, so statistics during that period are not very accurate.

Beer adds an astounding 9 lbs to each American (15 and older) on average per year

The calorie intake from beer is simply astounding. The 43,050 calories translate to 9 lbs of body fat. This conversion is based on the fact that 1 gram of fat equals 9 calories, and that the metabolic conversion is only 85 percent efficient, meaning that we burn 15 percent of the calories in the process of making body fat. The scientific underpinning of this calculation can be found on Wikipedia in the “Food Energy” entry.

References:

http://www.niaaa.nih.gov/Resources/DatabaseResources/QuickFacts/AlcoholSales/Pages/default.aspx

http://www.fatsecret.com/calories-nutrition/heineken/heineken-beer

http://www.winepros.org/wine101/wine-health.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_energy