Booze poll [Matthew's Journal]

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There has been some discussion on the relative merits and harms of drinking alcohol. This evening,

atreic were talking about the dieting implications of drinking booze, and this prompted me to look some things up on the internet (TM). I'm interested to see what people think is the case, so please don't look anything up before answering the poll - I'll post answers in a day or two.

If it helps, 1g of ethanol contains 7 calories. Diet coke contains 0.5 calories in 100ml, so I've just asked about Tia Maria without any mixers. I appreciate that "draught bitter" and "red wine" cover a range of beverages, but assume a typical draught bitter, and typical red wine...

[Poll #1416236]

ETA: Answers here

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There are 20 comments on this entry. (Reply.)

I don't know the answers, but I do know that if I stopped drinking a couple of bottles of wine a week, I'd have less trouble fitting into my trousers :-(

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I cycle 4 miles to work (like a crazy fool), which gives me licence to drink as much beer as I like without getting wider :-)

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Ditto :)

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I used to do that. I used to eat 6 meals a day plus snacks and never put on a pound. I used to get lectures from Ma about not eating enough - even though I ate 6 meals a day. Now I have a bike for going nowhere and don't use it.

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Bollocks. Well, OK, it might work for you. It does not, has not, and never will work for me. And I cycle 4.5 :-P

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Yes, 4.5 miles each way at, say, 20 calories per mile, is just 180 calories. A packet of crisps or a couple of bananas. It's very easy to accommodate your diet to a short commute like that.

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Cambridge is distressingly unsuited to putting one's nose down and hammering away.

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I'm not even sure that helps much, given if you go faster you get there sooner, and while exercising harder you do so for less time.

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Work done to overcome air resistance varies with the square of speed. :-)

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I don't drink beer, so am rather adrift with that. I am guesing, however, on the basis that I like fattening stuff, that it has less than wine or tia maria.

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I'd point out that:

a) Studies of alcohol consumption and weight have found no link between the two
b) Measurements of calorie values of alcohol are almost certainly very misleading. Your body isn't trying to turn alcohol into energy; it's trying to rid itself of a toxin as quickly as possible.

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I don't think I can answer this; raw calorie count is meaningless to my metabolism.

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I've never given a shit how many calories are in anything, TBH, so I know nothing about the subject. Some would say that was because I had various Privileges. I could have taken an interest in it because it's a sciencey numbery thing that other people are interested in, some for dubious reasons. Or I could have ended up doing nutritional epidemiology at work. But I didn't.

Edited Date: 2009-06-15 10:09 pm (UTC)

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what's the answer?
I remember I used to have a diary which had a calories list in it and I can remember baileys was shockingly calorific, and alchol was bad, but I can't remember wine and beer in particular.

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I'll post answers this evening or first thing tomorrow; I want to give people time to vote :)

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You can put a lower bound on it by using the volume of each drink and knowing roughly the percentage of alcohol in each, and then multiplying by your 7 cals/gram. The amounts I added on top of that purely alcohol-based calorie count varied (and were wild guesses), but I did bear in mind that tia maria is pretty much made of sugar. The beer and wine contain nearly the same amount of alcohol, and the tia maria is about half as much. So they could in fact quite plausibly all have the same number of calories (to a rough approximation).

I'm interested that you used the new "big" 35/70ml measure for the tia maria, rather than the standard 25/50ml one.

Generally IME when dieting you're encouraged to drink things like white-wine-and-soda (because it lasts longer than white wine alone) or spirits-and-diet-mixer (because it's the lowest cals in general) and to alternate with soft drinks. As a possibly interesting data point a 275 ml bottle of Beck's is 5 points on slimming world and the alcohol free version (same size) is 3 points. I don't think the alcohol really is only 2/5 of the calories in beer though or your poll's answers didn't go high enough!

When I was slimming in 2002ish I definitely found I lost weight *better* on weeks where I saved my points for alcohol rather than food, so I suspect that those who say the calorie content of the ethanol isn't directly metabolised the same way as usual may well be right.

Um, feel free to hide this comment if you think it contains too much in the way of spoilers.

Edited Date: 2009-06-16 08:21 am (UTC)

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That's where this post came from. I remarked that the weight watchers advice was to have spirits and diet coke, and so we we bickering about whether tia maria and coke actually was lower calorie than wine...

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Um, Tia Maria is a liqueur, not a spirit! Gin and slimline tonic for the win! (Um, if you're dieting that is).

Edited Date: 2009-06-17 07:58 am (UTC)

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Would it be all right if I said to answer your poll that "I personally couldn't care less, and have lost lots of weight without counting the calories in either alcoholic drinks or anything else (and also the complete converse), and suspect it is more likely to stay off that way too" (while not denegrating anyone's choices in terms of fitness and health strategies)? Whether I am at risk of being pickled, or not, is a whole other matter.

I suspect the beer is the most calorific re the amount(s) stated, probably...but I don't drink beer anyway, nor enough Tia Maria to warrant attention.

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You're allowed not to care about the calories in things - I certainly don't! :-)

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Matthew's Journal

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