You expect to find nutrition facts when you’re shopping in the cereal aisle, but when you’re at the liquor store it can be nearly impossible to find out how many calories—let alone anything else—are in your booze. If you’re clamoring for more details on what’s in your booze, here’s the latest update: The Alcohol Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) recently issued a ruling that gives alcohol companies the go-ahead to put Serving Facts labels on their products. The TTB proposed a rule in 2007 that would make these labels mandatory—but they have yet to decide on the fate of this rule. In the meantime, they’re giving this temporary green light to companies that want to participate. It’s totally voluntary, though—meaning alcohol manufacturers get to choose whether or not to roll these labels out.
Companies that choose to use the new Serving Facts statements will clearly list the serving size, as well as the calories, carbs, fat, and protein per serving. Granted, manufacturers were already permitted to include all of these stats on their labels before. The differences: Now, there’s a new recommended Serving Facts format (which looks a lot like the nutrition facts label you’d find on food and non-alcoholic drinks), and beverage companies have the option of listing information about the alcohol content. Plus, manufacturers now have to include the number of servings per container if they include Serving Facts. In this new ruling, the TTB says that some companies may need to consider changing their listed serving sizes to reflect how their drinks are actually consumed.
Of course, even if the new serving size isn’t standard, you’ll still need to use your own judgment. Just like with any food or non-alcoholic beverage, the amount you consume isn’t necessarily the same as the serving size, says Elizabeth Mayer-Davis, PhD, chair of the nutrition department at the University of North Carolina Gillings School of Global Public Health. “There’s an example in the ruling of a 24-ounce bottle of a malt beverage that has 4 ¾ servings per container, and each serving has 139 calories,” says Mayer-Davis. You could easily think you’re taking in 139 calories when you’re probably going to consume more like 660—the total amount in the bottle.
The upshot: If these new “Serving Facts” labels do become mandatory, they would offer up a lot more information to shoppers—but that’s still just a big if at this point.
“I think the more information we can provide to consumers, the better,” says Eric Rimm, a Doctor of Science and associate professor of epidemiology and nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health. “While I’m not sure that everybody who grabs an alcoholic beverage will be looking at the nutrition facts, for those people who do, at least it provides some additional information that they probably did not know before.”
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