Lose Weight Program > Cocktail Calories Count in Corpulence

Let's be temperate about temperance. Alcohol as a moral problem is outside the field of this book. But alcohol as a food, or at least an article of diet, is a big subject to the weight reducer.

It must be conceded that a great many alcoholics are spindling and cadaverous. They get that way because they use alcohol instead of food. Normal persons, to whom drink is only an occasional accessory to food, must look upon alcohol as a potential contributor to corpulence.

Alcohol is funny stuff, as the night-clubber said when he found two wives waiting up for him. It provides plenty of calories and burns with a lovely light, especially on plum pudding. It bums within you with the same intensity - at the rate of 7 calories per gram, nearly twice the output of protein or carbohydrate and within a couple of calories of the high-heat level of fats. Alcohol provides a fourth kind of calories.

Practically alone among food materials, alcohol can be absorbed directly from the stomach without the intervention of digestion. Once it is in the blood it has no place to go. There are no friendly storehouses to welcome it, as is the case with other foods. Consequently it has to be burned, liberated as heat and energy. It takes about three and a half hours for the average person to bum one ounce of alcohol, the amount you or someone else gets from two ounces of 100-proof whisky.

Number among the virtues of alcohol the fact that its energy is rapidly available and that it has its place in medical practice. It also encourages a tautly nervous person to relax, and for that reason, especially among the elderly, it is sometimes an aid to digestion.

For most of us, however, alcohol goes to work so fast producing energy that other foods we have eaten aren't given a chance. They aren't needed while alcohol is taking over the whole job and they hate to cross the picket line. They can be stored in the body if alcohol can't, so the food that isn't needed just transforms itself to fat in the hope that it will be appreciated at a later date.

If your daily calorie count takes due notice of the energy value of alcohol, however, you can see that all food is assimilated by keeping it within maintenance limits. Alcohol calories count just the same as any other, even though they aren't very good calories.

Composition of drinks as served by host or bartender varies greatly, depending entirely upon the generosity and variety and quantity, of ingredients. The above may be taken as fairly average figures even though they may not apply to the last calorie to a specific drink. If you want to calculate more accurately, figure 30 grams to the ounce (actually it's 28.4), and count 7 calories for each gram of pure alcohol. If whisky is 100 proof, it's 50 per cent alcohol; if 86 proof, 43 per cent is alcohol - divide the proof of a beverage by half to get the alcohol percentage.


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