IIf you’ve browsed the refrigerated section of a liquor store recently, you may have been greeted by a mountain of pre-mixed cocktails: pina coladas, vodka mules, rum and cokes, mojitos, and more. You may have then popped open one and thought, “It’s a little sweet for my taste, but it’s okay.” Turn the bottle over and look at the nutrition label to see exactly how much sugar and artificial sweeteners are in it… and you’ll probably find that there’s nothing in it.
Many ready-to-drink cocktails and alcoholic drinks contain as much sugar as sodas like Coca-Cola. The high amount of sugar and other additives puts many alcoholic drinks in the “ultra-processed foods” (UPF) category. However, unlike other sweetened drinks, most alcoholic drinks are not required to have nutritional labeling, creating a loophole that allows ultra-processed foods to sneak into our diets unknowingly.
So how do you know what’s in that after-dinner drink or cocktail you’re sipping on the town? It’s complicated.
Why is alcohol called ultra-processed alcohol?
The concept of ultra-processed foods was first coined by Carlos Monteiro, a professor of nutrition and public health at the University of São Paulo in Brazil, in 2009. He argued that nutritionists should pay attention not just to the nutrients, such as sugar, fat and sodium, contained in foods, but also to the amount of processing that goes into delivering them.
While some foods are “unprocessed” or “minimally processed,” such as raw vegetables and dried fruits, the majority of foods are “processed” in some way (think canned peaches, fresh bread, cheese, pickled vegetables, etc.). Not all processed foods are necessarily unhealthy; in fact, processed foods allow us to fight hunger by preserving food year-round and fight vitamin deficiencies by increasing the nutritional value of foods.
But since the 1980s, an increasing percentage of the world’s food supply has become “ultra-processed” – industrially formulated combinations of additives (like artificial colors and preservatives) and food-derived substances (like hydrogenated fats and starches). Today’s ultra-processed foods include everything from packaged breads to sugary breakfast cereals to frozen meals, and are linked to a variety of health problems, including diabetes, obesity, depression, and certain cancers.
Whether alcoholic beverages count toward the UPF is difficult to determine, Monteiro and colleagues write. 2019But they offer some general guidelines: Fermented beverages like beer, cider and wine are considered “processed” and “ultra-processed” if the alcohol is fermented and then distilled, like whiskey, gin, rum and vodka.
For example, wine is made by fermenting grapes, but spirits like brandy are made by first fermenting grapes into wine, then heating the wine to turn it into steam, and then condensing the steam back into a more alcoholic liquid, says Gavin Rabbi Sachs, a professor of food science at Cornell University and author of “Understanding the Chemistry of Wine.”
The concept of ultra-processed foods is still new, and researchers are divided on which foods should fall into this category — there’s a big difference between Cheetos, which are engineered for maximum addictiveness, and distilled alcohol, which is tailored to suit consumer tastes. Hundreds year.
Another way to tell if an alcoholic drink is UPF is to look at its ingredients. Like many foods, alcohol can have additional ingredients added during processing. Some of these are used to standardize the product available each year (as base ingredients like grapes, barley, and hops are crops whose quality can vary from year to year). Other additives include caramel coloring, which makes tequilas from different years look the same before blending, and tartaric acid, which makes wines that have lost their acidity a little more tart.
Why it’s hard to tell which drinks are UPF
But it’s hard to know exactly what additives are in your alcoholic drinks, because most drinks aren’t required to print an ingredients label or nutrition facts label. In the US, alcohol is regulated by the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, part of the Treasury Department, rather than the Food and Drug Administration (with a few exceptions, like hard seltzer and wines with less than 7% alcohol by volume).
The reason for this dates back to Prohibition, “to keep the distribution channel from being controlled by bad actors,” Sachs says, and adds, “alcohol was not part of a nutritious diet. It was part of the average person’s diet that the FDA was regulating.”
Still, there are ways consumers can find out what additives are in their drinks.
The UK Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) doesn’t require nutritional labelling, but it does impose fairly strict standards of identity. In the case of wine, additives “must be something that occurs naturally in the grape or the wine,” Sachs says. If producers want to add something that’s not covered by the TTB, they can do so by adding a label to the wine. Approval List If a wine is produced without additives (and processing aids that do not remain in the final product), it must be relabeled as “flavored wine” and list the ingredients. Some producers use the term “natural wine” to refer to wines made with minimal effort, but the term is not well regulated in the US, and sulfites and other additives can be sneakily added.
“We know that dozens of additives are permitted in wine, and even more in beer and cocktails. As consumers, we have a right to know what additives are in each product so we can make informed choices about what we put into our bodies,” said Eva Greenthal, a senior policy scientist at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a food policy advocacy group.
There are a variety of additives permitted in distilled beverages, but the most common are glycerin (a sugar alcohol) and caramel coloring. (TTB is a Website Substances that are “generally recognized as safe” or “approved for their intended use” may be used in alcoholic beverages, including food and color additives.
Changes may occur
But some advocates are calling for change.
The U.S. last updated warning labels on alcohol in 1989, when it warned people not to drink during pregnancy or before driving. It is now considering adding more labels. Listening Sessions Seek public input on labels that disclose alcohol content, nutritional information, allergens and ingredients.
However, Greenthal noted that the rulemaking process at the TTB has been postponed four times, so it’s unclear when or if these changes will be made.
Putting nutrition warning labels on alcohol would be a big step, says Marissa G. Hall, a professor of health behavior at the Gillings School of Global Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, who is currently studying how the U.S. government should best design alcohol warning labels. But ultimately, she says, UPF isn’t the biggest health concern surrounding alcoholic beverages; it’s alcohol itself, which has been linked to many types of cancer.
Labeling alcoholic drinks would be a big step toward transparency, advocates say, but it’s just the start in changing American consumers’ and manufacturers’ attachment to ultra-processed foods.
