New Tricks: Macronutrients and Alcohol
Oct. 18th, 2018 09:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livingdebWhat I had already learned:
1) The macronutrients are protein (~4 calories per gram), carbohydrates (also ~4 calories per gram), and fat (~9 calories per gram). (This is still considered true.)
2) Alcohol is a carbohydrate. (This is not true.)
First of all, alcohol has ~7 calories per gram. I learned that from a flier I fount on campus when I went there to get my flu shot. Then I did more research.
Men's Journal has an interesting article on "How to Count Alcohol Against Your Daily Macros". They say that "By itself, alcohol is not a carb, fat, or protein. ... To metabolize booze, the body converts ethanol to acetaldehyde to acetate, and then shuttles it through the citric acid cycle—which means alcohol acts like both a carbohydrate and fat." [I don't know what the second sentence means except that acetaldehyde and acetate do not sound like sugars to me, which is what I expect carbs to turn into.]
When you're designing your diet, they say you could count it as a carb or a fat.
Reasons to count it as a fat:
* lots of calories per gram
* overconsuming it, like overconsuming fat, leads to weight gain
* if you're on a low-carb diet, you shouldn't use alcohol instead of other carbs
Reasons to count it as a carb:
* it is not essential life, just like carbs [this is also news to me]
* it interrupts your body's fat-burning process, also like carbs
* most alcoholic beverages have calories from carbohydrates as well as from alcohol
* if you're on a low-fat, high-carb diet, you shouldn't use alcohol instead of fats
KatieRingley.co's Macro Basics for Booze" shows that nutrition labels don't even list the calories that come from alcohol, only those from protein, fat, and carbs. Not that alcoholic drinks even have nutrition labels.
According to the Mayo Clinic's "Nutrition and healthy eating", "Typically "net carbs" is used to mean the amount of carbohydrates in a product excluding fiber, or excluding both fiber and sugar alcohols."
Follow-up question: Wait, isn't fiber a carb and don't we need that? Per Fiber Facts' "Do Fibers Count as Calories and Carbohydrates?", the FDA says that calories from soluble fiber are only partly absorbed by the body and should count as 2 calories per gram; insoluble fiber is not absorbed and can count as 0 calories per gram. But when calculating insulin needs for diabetics, don't count any of the calories because their absorption rates don't affect insulin.
Additional follow-up information: Sugar alcohols are not well absorbed, so you end up with fewer calories per gram than sugar, though none of them are listed under carbs. They are, however, included in the total calorie count.
1) The macronutrients are protein (~4 calories per gram), carbohydrates (also ~4 calories per gram), and fat (~9 calories per gram). (This is still considered true.)
2) Alcohol is a carbohydrate. (This is not true.)
First of all, alcohol has ~7 calories per gram. I learned that from a flier I fount on campus when I went there to get my flu shot. Then I did more research.
Men's Journal has an interesting article on "How to Count Alcohol Against Your Daily Macros". They say that "By itself, alcohol is not a carb, fat, or protein. ... To metabolize booze, the body converts ethanol to acetaldehyde to acetate, and then shuttles it through the citric acid cycle—which means alcohol acts like both a carbohydrate and fat." [I don't know what the second sentence means except that acetaldehyde and acetate do not sound like sugars to me, which is what I expect carbs to turn into.]
When you're designing your diet, they say you could count it as a carb or a fat.
Reasons to count it as a fat:
* lots of calories per gram
* overconsuming it, like overconsuming fat, leads to weight gain
* if you're on a low-carb diet, you shouldn't use alcohol instead of other carbs
Reasons to count it as a carb:
* it is not essential life, just like carbs [this is also news to me]
* it interrupts your body's fat-burning process, also like carbs
* most alcoholic beverages have calories from carbohydrates as well as from alcohol
* if you're on a low-fat, high-carb diet, you shouldn't use alcohol instead of fats
KatieRingley.co's Macro Basics for Booze" shows that nutrition labels don't even list the calories that come from alcohol, only those from protein, fat, and carbs. Not that alcoholic drinks even have nutrition labels.
According to the Mayo Clinic's "Nutrition and healthy eating", "Typically "net carbs" is used to mean the amount of carbohydrates in a product excluding fiber, or excluding both fiber and sugar alcohols."
Follow-up question: Wait, isn't fiber a carb and don't we need that? Per Fiber Facts' "Do Fibers Count as Calories and Carbohydrates?", the FDA says that calories from soluble fiber are only partly absorbed by the body and should count as 2 calories per gram; insoluble fiber is not absorbed and can count as 0 calories per gram. But when calculating insulin needs for diabetics, don't count any of the calories because their absorption rates don't affect insulin.
Additional follow-up information: Sugar alcohols are not well absorbed, so you end up with fewer calories per gram than sugar, though none of them are listed under carbs. They are, however, included in the total calorie count.