Next time you think about going on a diet to lose weight, maybe you should expand your restrictions to cover not only what you eat, but also what you drink.
A new survey by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control found the average drinker gets about 16 percent of his or her calories from alcoholic beverages, which contribute about 100 calories a day to the average American’s diet, a worrisome figure for experts in occupational medicine Longview Texas.
“We’ve been focusing on sugar-sweetened beverages. This is something new,” said Cynthia Ogden, one of the study’s authors. She is an epidemiologist with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which released its findings Thursday.
Soft drinks and sodas that people consume was found to account for 6 percent of the calories a person in the U.S. consumes daily. The findings of this study state that the consumption of alcohol by an American adult accounts for 5 percent of the daily amount of calorie intake.
According to the CDC, one serving of alcohol, not including mixers, on average contains about 100 to 150 calories with a 12-ounce beer being 150 calories, a 5-ounce glass of wine being 120 calories and a 1.5-ounce or shot of liquor being about 100 calories.
The calories in alcohol mainly come from sugar, and federal dietary guidelines recommend no more than 5 percent to 15 percent of total calories from solid fats or added sugars. Because alcoholic beverages is considered a source of added sugar, the results from the latest study show that the average American’s 16 percent of daily calories exceeds that recommended 15 percent limit.
To the surprise of experts in personal injury Longview Texas, researchers found that men drank more beer compared to other types of alcohol, with beer accounting for 103 of the 150 alcohol calories drunk per day by men, and beer, wine and liquor contributed nearly equally to the daily alcohol calories count among women.
Researchers found that while the average calorie count from alcoholic drinks did not differ by race or ethnicity, higher earning women drank more than those who earned less. Federal dietary guidelines state that if a person wants to drink, he or she should do so in moderate amounts – which, according to the guidelines, is one glass for women and two for men.
However, through this study, researchers have found that while most of the population abide by these guidelines, 19 percent of men and 12 percent of women exceed the amount of alcohol they should consume in a day.