Tell Consumers How Many Calories There are in Alcohol

Source: nytimes.com

The Editorial Board

July 29th

The average 12-ounce beer has 153 calories, slightly more than a can of Coca-Cola. But the typical beer drinker probably doesn’t know that, because regulators have long exempted alcohol producers from stamping their products with the kinds of nutritional labels that are required on other beverages and on food.

Recently, the country’s biggest beer companies, including Anheuser-Busch, MillerCoors and Heineken, announced that they would soon begin putting calorie, alcohol content and other information on bottles and cans. This is a good step, but it’s not sufficient. Unless all alcohol companies start labeling their products under the current voluntary standards, federal regulators ought to require it.

With obesity a national health problem, health experts have been particularly concerned about the consumption of “empty calories” from alcohol, soft drinks and other foods that contain few or no essential nutrients. About one-third of men and 18 percent of women drink alcohol on any given day, and those drinks account for about 16 percent of the calories they consume, according to a 2012 report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Labeling alcohol products would help consumers make better choices. Studies like one published in the American Journal of Public Health in 2010 have found that calorie counts on menus influence people to pick healthier options. Labels on alcoholic drinks could have the added benefit of encouraging people to drink less and thus help reduce drunken driving and other dangerous behaviors.

Why don’t beer, wine and liquor already have the same labeling requirements as food? One important reason is that the Treasury Department’s Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, not the Food and Drug Administration, regulates most kinds of alcohol. The bureau has considered requiring labels that provide more information to consumers, most recently in 2007. But it backed away from mandatory requirements because of the industry’s resistance and instead, in 2013, issued voluntary labeling standards, which few companies have followed.

In addition to the beer companies, Diageo, a multinational corporation that sells liquor, wine and beer, has said that it will begin putting calorie counts on its products. But many winemakers and craft brewers refuse to provide calorie counts or even to disclose how much alcohol is in their drinks.

The voluntary standard hasn’t been effective, and it may be time for regulators to come up with mandatory labeling requirements for all alcohol products.