The short answer is that, mainly as a legacy of Prohibition, alcoholic beverages aren't regulated by the FDA, but a different federal agency called the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau TTB — and this agency doesn't require nutritional labeling. But consumer advocates have also pressured the agency to require labeling several times — and it never seems to happen. Alcohol manufacturers have managed to fend off the push for years. Finally, in , the TTB made nutrition labels optional for booze, but not required.
This might seem trivial, but some experts think it's a real public health issue. She has found that the average American who drinks regularly takes in calories daily from alcohol — not a huge surprise, given that average beer or glass of wine has about calories.
The roots of this strange situation can be traced to Shortly after the repeal of Prohibition, congress passed the Alcohol Administration Act, which established what would eventually become the TTB in order to generate tax revenue from newly-legal alcohol and gave it the responsibility of regulating the labels on alcoholic beverages. As a result, in , when modern nutrition labels on all packaged foods became required by the FDA , alcohol wasn't affected.
Instead, over the years, a hodgepodge of different labeling rules for different sorts of alcohol were put into place. Bottles of distilled liquor must have a label indicating the alcohol percentage, and the same goes for bottles of wine with more than 14 percent alcohol. On the other hand, these labels are optional for wines with less than 14 percent alcohol, as well as for all beers.
It used to be the case that beers couldn't list their alcohol content, for fear that they'd advertise on that basis and get into a boozy arms race, but a Supreme Court ruling said that ban violated the First Amendment. Meanwhile, when it comes to calories and nutrients i.
Wines with less than 7 percent alcohol and beers that don't have malted barley actually fall under FDA rules, which specify that they need to list standard nutrition facts and ingredients — but labels about the alcohol content are optional.
Calorie counts are optional for every other sort of beverage, but if they are listed, the amounts of carbohydrates, protein, and fat must be listed as well. Pretty much the only types of beverages that do this are low-calorie light beers. Finally, listing ingredients grapes, barley, rice, etc. Manufacturers do have to label beverages that have specific substances to which people might be sensitive sulfites and yellow no.
At least six times since the s, consumer advocate groups — most notably, the Center for Science in the Public Interest — have tried persuading the federal government to require comprehensive labels on all alcohol. They have been repeatedly thwarted by alcohol manufacturers, who have made a number of different arguments as to why it would be a bad idea.
In response, manufacturers asked for voluntary labels. One of their arguments was that putting nutrition facts on all bottles of alcohol would make consumers erroneously think that alcohol was nutritious. In , the agency basically sided with manufacturers, issuing guidelines that allowed them to list calories, carbs, protein, and fat — if they wanted. In our recent attempt to rank the best and worst alcoholic beverages according to calorie content , we were struck by how difficult it was to research this topic.
And in a world where even a bottle of water is packaged with nutritional information, it seems a little strange. So what gives?
Alcohol is regulated by the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau TTB and it would be up to this organization to require alcohol companies to disclose nutritional information. After Prohibition was repealed in , Congress passed the Alcohol Administration Act in which would eventually become the TTB to ensure that tax revenue was generated from newly legal alcohol. Health professionals have voiced their concerns over a lack of nutritional transparency when it comes to alcoholic drinks.
Over the years, there has been a push for more transparency from advocacy groups, but alcohol groups have fought against it. The main reason for the separation of food products and alcohol was to generate tax revenue on the newly legalized beverages. But since alcohol doesn't fall under the FDA, it was able to skirt around these requirements.
In , the TTB made labels optional if manufacturers wanted to include them, but not required. This led some alcohol brands to use nutrition as a means of marketing, without any consistent means of comparison between products think beer commercials calling out high-fructose corn syrup or just how low they are in carbs. There are pros and cons to the idea of putting nutritional information on alcoholic beverages, and both sides have avid supporters. Excess calorie consumption can come from many things, and one area of our diets that is sometimes overlooked is alcohol.
Nutrition labeling may help people become more aware of serving sizes and how alcohol can add to daily calorie intake. One major hangup for people is that ingredient labeling on alcoholic beverages is totally optional.
Regardless of nutrition, it can provide peace of mind to know what you are consuming. For example, the bright red color of Campari, a popular Italian liqueur, used to be derived from insect powder some brands still do use carmine as a coloring agent, some don't.
That may be a dangerous ingredient for someone with a shellfish allergy, and something vegans would want to avoid, but neither group would be able to know what's in their drink by reading the label on the bottle. An ingredient list would demystify what goes in to the alcoholic products we consume.
In order to create a Nutrition Facts label, each variation of each product must have a sample sent to an authorized lab for nutrition analysis.
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