Calories and alcohol
How many calories do we actually consume when drinking?
The UK loves booze. Unfortunately, the UK also has a bit of a weight problem. These two characteristics could be quite closely related. Pure alcohol, despite not tasting very nice, contains seven calories per gram, making it the second most calorie-dense thing after fat, which has nine calories in a gram. In other words, it’s impossible to have an alcoholic drink with no calories.
According to an NHS Digital study, the average English person drinks 11.7 units of alcohol each week. A unit’s worth of alcoholic drink contains roughly 85 calories on average. This means they also consume about 1,000 calories from alcoholic drinks each week – the same amount of calories as two Big Macs. Since a pound of fat contains about 3,500 calories, this also means that the average person could lose 15 pounds (6.8kg) in one year by going teetotal.
Alcohol consumption varies significantly between genders and age groups, so alcohol calorie consumption does as well. And different drinks contain different amounts of calories – a pint of lager has far more than a small glass of wine, for example. See the tables below for stats for your own demographic, and for calories per drink type.
Weekly calories consumed from alcoholic drinks
| Men | Women | Average | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 16-24 years | 1,233 | 757 | 995 |
| 25-34 years | 1,148 | 638 | 893 |
| 35-44 years | 1,224 | 774 | 999 |
| 45-54 years | 1,513 | 850 | 1,182 |
| 55-64 years | 1,292 | 952 | 1,122 |
| 65-74 years | 1,292 | 774 | 1,033 |
| 75 years and over | 1,012 | 519 | 765 |
| Average | 1,245 | 752 | 998 |
998 calories
drunk by the average English person each week.
Alcohol habits during the COVID-19 lockdown
As 60% of the Brits have stockpiled food for the lockdown, many have also picked up some extra drinks to make sure the home bar doesn’t dry out. During March 2020, alcohol sales went up by 22%, which is equal to £199 million. Whether drinks are consumed on a Friday evening video call, or on Tuesday night to wind down, it’s definitely could be easier to drink more at home than in a bar. This could be a recipe for bingeing, especially when the alcohol is cheaper and you’re deciding on the size of the servings.
How aware is the UK?
It seems many people are unaware of how many calories they’re taking in this way. We commissioned a survey where we asked 2,000 British adults to state how many calories they thought were in some popular alcoholic drinks and found that on average almost half (46%) of people had simply no idea. Only a third of people could estimate the calorie content of drinks within 50% of the correct value.
Alarmingly, 5% of people thought that a pint has less than 40 calories in it. That equates to 2.7 million people in the UK! Our results also suggested that this blind spot is more common the younger you are, as millennials and generation Z were four times more likely to think this than baby boomers. In fact, baby boomers tended to overestimate the calorie content of drinks. When asked how many calories they thought were in a shot of vodka, their average answer was 112, which is more than double the correct answer of 54.
How many guessed calories of alcoholic drinks to within 50% of true figure
Interestingly, women are significantly more clued up on the subject than men, even though they drink about half as much. In our study, women were 24% more likely to guess the number of calories in a drink, within 50% of the true value.
How accurate were the guesses?
| Drink | Total calories | Calories per unit of alcohol | Percentage of people who had no idea of calorie content |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pint of Lager | 230 | 85 | 65% |
| Pint of Cider | 216 | 83 | 59% |
| Pint of Guinness | 218 | 88 | 61% |
| Small glass of wine (175ml) | 159 | 69 | 59% |
| Shot of vodka (25ml) | 51 | 54 | 79% |
| Shot of gin (25ml) | 52 | 55 | 80% |
| Shot of tequila (25ml) | 55 | 55 | 81% |
| Shot of sambuca (25ml) | 80 | 84 | 73% |
| An alcopop (275ml) | 170 | 155 | 64% |
| A double gin and tonic (standard measures) | 160 | 85 | 63% |
| A double vodka and red bull (standard measures) | 171 | 91 | 64% |
| A double rum and coke (standard measures) | 167 | 84 | 64% |
Drinks with the most and fewest calories
| Drink | Volume (ml) | ABV (%) | Units | Calories | Calories/unit |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Champagne | 125 | 12 | 1.5 | 89 | 59 |
| Spirit | 25 | 40 | 1 | 61 | 61 |
| Wine | 175 | 13 | 2.3 | 159 | 69 |
| Beer | 568 | 4 | 2.3 | 182 | 79 |
| Cider | 568 | 4.5 | 2.6 | 216 | 83 |
| Beer | 330 | 5 | 1.6 | 142 | 89 |
| Alcopop | 275 | 4 | 1.1 | 170 | 155 |
| Average | 85 |
If you love drinking but want to minimise the calories it adds to your body, it’s worth looking into the calorie content of different types of alcohol. Spirits are generally the best bet, as most of their calorie content is from the alcohol itself, rather than adding extra on top in the form of carbs (as long as they’re drunk with a sugar-free mixer such as soda water, or no mixer at all). Vodka, for example, has 54 calories per unit of alcohol, much less than, for example, cider’s 83. Champagne, surprisingly, is a reasonably good option too, with 59 calories in one unit’s worth. Avoid alcopops, as they’ll have you taking in far more sugar than you need.
| Drink | Calories/unit |
|---|---|
| Champagne | 59 |
| Spirit | 61 |
| Wine | 69 |
| Beer | 79 |
| Cider | 83 |
| Beer | 89 |
| Alcopop | 155 |
The calories in a pint of beer can vary significantly as well. While most brands are in the mid 200s, Coors Light and Carling contain 170 and 195 calories per pint respectively. Guinness, despite often being referred to as a “meal in a glass”, has 218 calories in a pint, the third least out of this sample.
| Beer brand | Calories |
|---|---|
| Carling | 182 |
| Carlsberg | 210 |
| Guinness | 210 |
| Coors Light | 199 |
| Foster's | 204 |
| Budweiser | 222 |
| Stella Artois | 227 |
| Grolsch | 227 |
| Heineken | 239 |
| Peroni | 239 |
| Corona | 239 |
| Kronenbourg 1664 | 245 |
Calories per 25ml shot of different spirits
| Spirit | ABV (%) | Units | Calories | Calories/unit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rum | 40 | 1 | 52 | 52 |
| Vodka | 38 | 0.9 | 51 | 54 |
| Whiskey | 40 | 1 | 55 | 55 |
| Tequila | 40 | 1 | 55 | 55 |
| Gin | 38 | 0.9 | 52 | 55 |
| Brandy | 36 | 0.9 | 50 | 56 |
| Sambuca | 38 | 1 | 80 | 84 |
Spirits are, for the most part, equally fattening, putting 50-60 calories into your body with each 25ml measure. This amount depends mostly on the spirit’s strength: the higher the alcohol content, the more calories it contains. Sambuca, however, is the shocking exception to this, containing almost double the amount of calories per shot, without having the common decency to at least contain more alcohol. This is likely due to its high sugar content.
| Alcohol | Calories |
|---|---|
| Brandy | 50 |
| Vodka | 51 |
| Rum | 52 |
| Gin | 52 |
| Whiskey | 55 |
| Tequila | 55 |
| Sambuca | 80 |
Calories in popular mixed drinks (double measure + 150ml mixer)
| Drink | Total calories | ABV (%) | Units | Calories/unit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rum and Diet Coke | 105 | 10 | 2 | 53 |
| Gin and diet tonic | 107 | 9.4 | 1.9 | 57 |
| Whiskey and Diet Coke | 111 | 10 | 2 | 56 |
| Vodka, lime and soda | 112 | 9.4 | 1.9 | 60 |
| Screwdriver | 157 | 9.4 | 1.9 | 84 |
| Gin and tonic | 160 | 9.4 | 1.9 | 85 |
| Vodka cranberry | 165 | 9.4 | 1.9 | 88 |
| Rum and Coke | 167 | 10 | 2 | 84 |
| Vodka Red Bull | 171 | 9.4 | 1.9 | 91 |
| Whiskey and Coke | 173 | 10 | 2 | 87 |
Unsurprisingly, if you want to minimise your caloric intake, you should go for calorie-free mixers such as Diet Coke and soda water. Less obvious, however, is that a standard gin and tonic, despite often getting recommended as a healthy choice, isn’t actually much better calorie-wise than other spirit-mixer combos. Per unit, it contains about the same number of calories as beer. Gin with diet tonic, of course, is a different story, as almost all of the calories come from the gin.
| Drink | Calories |
|---|---|
| Rum and Diet Coke | 105 |
| Gin and diet tonic | 107 |
| Whiskey and Diet Coke | 111 |
| Vodka, lime and soda | 112 |
| Screwdriver | 157 |
| Gin and tonic | 160 |
| Vodka cranberry | 165 |
| Rum and Coke | 167 |
| Vodka Red Bull | 171 |
| Whiskey and Coke | 173 |
Calories calculated for 50ml of spirit and 150ml mixer.
Sources used
- NHS Digital
- Drink Aware
- USDA
- Kantar
- Sainsbury’s
- DRINKiQ
- Tesco
- Asda
Click here for more research. For all media enquiries, please contact:
Matt Mckenna
UK Communications Manager
T: +44 20 8191 8806
UK Communications Manager
T: +44 20 8191 8806
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