In the past
few years there has been a push for nutritional labels on alcoholic beverages,
but there has been no movement toward this happening. The more health conscious population today is
interested in what is in what they consume.
Here is the reason we haven’t seen any progress toward this end
according to the Huffington Post.
Don't expect
it to change anytime soon. 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.
In case you haven't noticed, alcohol rarely ever comes with a nutritional
label. And in a world where even a bottle of water is packaged with nutritional
information, it seems a little strange.
It's all about the FDA. Here's
the short answer: alcohol is not regulated by the FDA, so it's not subject to
the same rules as other food and drink (such as nutritional labels).
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. When Prohibition was
repealed in 1935, Congress passed the Alcohol Administration Act, which would
eventually become the TTB to ensure that tax revenue was generated from newly
legal alcohol. And so in the '90s, when the FDA required nutritional labels on
other goods, alcohol was not affected. (With the exception of alcoholic drinks
with seven percent alcohol or less that don't contain malted barley, because
those are regulated by the FDA.)
Change won't
come easily. Health professionals have
voiced their concerns over a lack of nutritional transparency when it comes to
alcoholic drinks. These drinks are generally highly caloric? someone who
imbibes daily can easily drink more than 400 calories? Because there is no information for
consumers, it's easy for that fact to be ignored.
Over the
years, there has been a push for more transparency from advocacy groups, but
alcohol groups have fought against it. Some alcohol companies have claimed that
nutritional labels would give consumers the false impression that alcohol is
nutritious. Though, the more probable
explanation is that these companies are scared of the potential backlash from
health-conscious imbibers. With other nutritionally-void products like soda
steadily on the decline because of the public's move toward healthier
lifestyles, it's easy to see why.
Read More at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/alcohol-nutritional-information_us_596cb1ebe4b03389bb18ca6b
