You know the old saying “eating’s cheating” ahead of a big night out, and that the calories you’ll get from a pint of beer will do the job for you. Or, Guinness is like a meal anyway. They’re sayings that happen all around the world, particularly from men.
However, what is the nutritional value of alcohol? Ultimately, nutrients are what we get from food during mealtimes in order to survive.
The whole eating is cheating philosophy is a dangerous one and one that perhaps gives off more than a few tell tale signs that someone has a problem with alcohol. Skipping meals for alcohol is one of the main traits of an alcoholic according to experts (see here for more) and it’s not good for you either.
When it comes to the nutritional value of alcohol, there isn’t any. In fact, alcohol contains around seven calories per gram, that’s almost the same as eating pure fat, and therefore calories from alcohol are considered “empty calories”. That doesn’t sound good, does it?
They don’t benefit our body remotely, and what’s more many alcohol drinks are high in sugar too, and not the good kind.
So, we’re putting these drinks into our bodies without food, and they’re having the same impact calorie wise, but without any benefit whatsoever. For example, a pint of lager carries the same calorie count as a slice of pizza, which in itself isn’t exactly good for us.
However, it goes way beyond that too. Drinking alcohol will also reduce the amount of fat our body burns for energy, while we also can’t store alcohol in our system, so the body has to work hard to remove alcohol from our system.
This is essentially why people end up with “beer bellies” as not only are we consuming empty calories, but also the body is working hard to remove the alcohol toxin from the body, interrupting the fat burning and absorbing nutrient process.
That’s because the body can store protein, carbohydrates and fat in our bodies, but not alcohol, and it can take a significant amount of time to burn off those empty calories.
For example, if you had an evening in the pub drinking four pints of 4% beer, that’s the equivalent of eating 2.4 cheeseburgers, and it would take well over an hour to burn those calories off.
So, eating isn’t cheating. In fact, drinking probably is. You’re certainly cheating your body of the nutrients you need and doing this often can have serious health impacts and lead to an incredibly unhealthy lifestyle that will certainly have complications later in life.
