Liquid calories: Six reasons wine can pile on the pounds 

If you want to keep your weight under control then you may need to reconsider your daily tipple, experts tell Peta Bee 

OUR drinking habits have taken a turn from the worse during the Covid-19 pandemic with a report by Drinkaware suggesting one-quarter of Irish people drank more during lockdown – even when the pubs were shut. And, compared to 2019 when 44% of Irish adults claimed to drink weekly, more than half (52%) of respondents said they are now drinking weekly.

Not surprising, you might think. Sheena Horgan, CEO of Drinkaware, says the findings show “how the new norm is changing Irish drinking habits and attitudes” and that, for most people (88%) the use of alcohol to relax or unwind is put down to rising levels of anxiety and stress.

But even if your alcohol intake inched up only by a glass or two a week, the sobering reality is that your waistline will be showing the effects. According to the Irish Nutrition & Dietetic Institute (INDI), people “forget to look at their alcohol intake” when trying to control their weight and it’s all too easy for the calories to mount up.

In a study presented at the virtual European and International Congress on Obesity recently, researchers warned that just a daily tipple can pave the way to significant weight gain. Men who drank half a glass of wine day or a quarter of a pint of beer a day were found to be 10% more prone to obesity and its related health problems – including high blood pressure and metabolic syndrome, linked to high blood sugar, cholesterol, and an increased risk of heart attacks and strokes. One or two glasses of wine or up to a pint of beer was associated with as much as a 25% greater likelihood of obesity compared with men who never drink.

Findings for women showed that, while an occasional drink offered some protection against metabolic syndrome, half a glass of wine a day still raised the odds of obesity by 9%, two glasses of wine by 22%.

Dietitian Paula Mee says it becomes even more of an issue from our 40s onwards. “As we get older, our metabolism slows down naturally so if that extra glass or two of wine or that couple of beers each night is over and above your energy requirements, the pounds will start to creep on,” she says. “For some people, drinking too much in one go means they become careless about what they eat, so they consume more calories in other ways too.”

Here’s how else alcohol can make you gain weight:

It’s packed with calories

With 7 calories in every gram of pure alcohol, it is easy to rack up a considerable number on a night out (or in). According to INDI spokesperson Ingrid Hutchinson a single standard drink – half a pint of lager or cider, 100ml glass of wine or a pub measure of spirits - contains 10g of alcohol, which amounts to 70 calories. But most alcoholic drinks “are mixed with sugar, cordials, mixers, cream and fruit juices” meaning the calorie reality is worse, she says.

A single gin and tonic comes in at around 97 calories while a double has 149, the calorific equivalent of five teaspoons of peanut butter or a strip of milk chocolate, and a small glass of wine (175ml) contains 160 calories. Two small bottles (330ml) of beer provide 244 calories, the same as a cheeseburger, a pint of cider has 216 calories, as many as a sugar doughnut, and sipping a single alcopop (170 calories) will mean you consume the same amount of calories as in a slice of ham and pineapple pizza.

“Alcohol has a high-calorie content but these are ‘empty calories’ with no nutritional value or benefit,” says Horgan.

Don’t forget the sugar content

All alcoholic drinks contain some sugar, but fortified wines, sherries, liqueurs and cider contain particularly high amounts. Among the worst offenders are ‘ready to drink’ pre-mixed spirits.

A survey of 202 products at Queen Mary University of London in January http://www.actiononsugar.org/surveys/2020/ready-to-drink-alcoholic-beverages/
found many to be unnecessarily high in hidden sugar but that only nine products (14%) had sugar information on the pack. Some premixed cocktails contained the equivalent of six teaspoons of sugar per 250ml serving.

According to Drinkaware, a six-pack of cider over the course of a week will add 32 grams of sugar to your intake while a bottle of wine contains almost eight teaspoons of sugar.

The World Health Organisation recommends that an adult’s daily sugar intake should not exceed roughly 50grams.

It switches your brain to hunger mode

Plenty of research suggests that alcohol disrupts the body’s perception of hunger and satiety which partly explains why an attack of the munchies is so common after a few drinks.

According to a 2017 study published in Nature journal this might be down to the way alcohol switches the brain into starvation mode, sending signals that you are hungry even if you’ve already eaten. In their study on mice, the researchers found that in animals injected with alcohol, there was a spike in activity of agouti-related peptides, or AgRP, brain neurons that drive food intake and which caused the mice to overeat.

When the AgRP cells were blocked by the scientists, the mice didn’t overeat after the alcohol injections, suggesting it was drink that triggered the appetite response.

Higher calorie intake if you drink before dinner

Even if you restrict yourself to a glass or two of wine before a meal, it could backfire for your waistline in what scientists call the ‘aperitif effect’ of drinking.

Researchers at Glasgow Caledonian University showed how potent the effects can be when they asked participants to drink either 375ml of red wine 20 minutes before a two-course lunch of garlic bread and pizza or 125 ml of red wine with the starter and 250 ml of red wine with the main course. [https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17107693/ ].
A control group had no wine but were given no restriction on how much food they consumed.

Results showed that 25% more calories were consumed when the wine was taken as an aperitif and energy intake was 22% higher when the alcohol was consumed during lunch compared to control group. Over the following three days, the wine drinkers also ate more, but the researchers said: “the effects of wine on appetite are immediate and stimulate food intake early in the meal”.

A drink can derail your dietary resolve

Alcohol is ‘disinhibiting’, meaning it melts away our dietary resolve. Last year, a review of 22 clinical studies published in the

British Journal of Nutrition by nutritionists at Monash University in Australia [https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/british-journal-of-nutrition/article/effect-of-alcohol-consumption-on-food-energy-intake-a-systematic-review-and-metaanalysis/2F9AB5C64A86329EB9E817ADAEC3D88C] found that even “a relatively modest alcohol dose may lead to an increase in food consumption” and that, typically, most drinkers don’t compensate by eating less at the next meal.

It slows fat burning

Only a tiny fraction of the alcohol you drink ends up being stored as fat. However, alcohol affects the body’s use of fat in other ways, suppressing fat oxidation as the body works to metabolise alcohol and remove it from the body. “Alcohol has an effect on metabolism and on how you break down carbohydrate and fats,” says Mee. “It’s so toxic that it goes to the top of the liver’s list of priorities and the body tries to purge it quickly while the metabolism of fats and carbs is put on hold.”

Just two drinks of vodka and diet lemonade were shown to temporarily reduce fat lipid oxidation by more than 70% in one study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.