Blog for all health-conscious: Fooducate Blog - Light Beer and Calorie Economics

Friday, 20 January 2012

Fooducate Blog - Light Beer and Calorie Economics

Posted: 20 Jan 2012 04:18 AM PST

photo: The Food Network

The Wall Street Journal recently reported that Coors Light moved up to the #2 position in terms of annual sales, dethroning Budweiser. The kicker was that the #1 most sold beer in the US is Bud Light.

We haven’t really focused on alcoholic beverages on Fooducate, so we found it odd that light beers are outselling regular beers in a country where most everything else is not light but rather heavy.

So what is a light beer, and is it a better choice than regular beer?

What you need to know:

A 12 fl oz regular beer is 150 calories, whereas a light beer is only 110 calories. Most of the calories in both come from alcohol, but both types of beer also have carbs – regular beer at 13 grams (52 grams), light beer at only 5 grams (20 calories).

Unlike diet soft drinks that achieve low calories through artificial sweeteners, light beer is simply brewed a bit differently than regular beer.

Light beer has less alcohol, which may be a good thing or a bad thing depending on your goal for the night. If you want to get the fun light headed buzz of alcohol from a light beer, you may discover that one isn’t enough, and then you will consume two, which are more caloric than one regular beer.

When it comes to flavor, light beer tastes watered down compared to regular, but if that’s the flavor you’ve gotten used to and are happy with, nothing wrong with that.

If you are drinking light beer despite its watered down flavor, just to keep the pounds off, maybe you should rethink that strategy. Just drink less of the regular stuff you enjoy. Or at fewer occasions.

In any case remember that when it comes to beer, you are not getting any nutrition, it’s just another “snack”.

And always drink responsibly.

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