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The consumption of any type of alcohol can affect your health . Health experts recommend that if you do not drink, it is better not to start doing it since there is no safe amount of alcohol, since a minimum consumption can increase the risks of different types of cancer and can also affect your heart.
If you drink, you may want to choose the type of alcohol that is “best”. The first filter to apply is for its calorie content, there are better options than others. Some drinks are very caloric , they have the same amount of calories as a meal, but without the nutrients. Alcohol contributes to increasing your weight in different ways, not only because of the contribution of calories but because interferes with the body’s fat burning mechanisms.
Drinks with less calories
The worst alcoholic beverages are mixed drinks, those that add juice, tonic or syrups. A 7-ounce glass of piña colada (205 ml) is approximately between 500 Y 600 calories, more than 30 grams of sugar.
Drinks with less caloric content are the champagne , a 4 oz glass has 85 calories; Drinks such as tequila, gin, rum, vodka and whiskey are approximately in 100 calories in 1.5 ounces; beer, a normal beer has between 145 and 150 calories and a light beer has between 100 and 105 calories; wine , in a 5 ounce glass there is approximately between 100 Y 120 calories; and the brandy or cognac that contain 100 calories in 1.5 oz.
Wines with less sugar
The most suitable wines for low sugar diets according to Wine Spectator are dry table wine and bubbly brut.
“Generally, if a wine is described as ‘dry’, that means there is less than 10 grams per liter of residual sugar ; a ‘sweet’ or dessert wine has more than 30 grams per liter. ”
An average dry table wine has 1 to 2 grams of sugar in a standard 5-ounce serving, and sweet wines, such as Sauternes, Port, and iced wine, contain about 8 grams of sugar for every 3.5 ounces.
Red wine and polyphenols
Among the less caloric drinks a dietitian helps to choose the one that would be a better option. Sydney Lappe dietitian at bistroMD leans towards red wine, pointing out to Eat This Not That that this drink generally offers plant compounds like tannins and resveratrol, slightly more than white wine.
The Harvard School of Public Health explains that red wine may contain several compounds in addition to alcohol that could relax the walls of the blood vessels and prevent the oxidation of low-density lipoproteins (LDL, “bad” cholesterol), which leads to the formation of cholesterol plaques.
The beneficial substances in wine are called polyphenols, which impart the unique color and flavor of wine. The polyphenols that stand out are resveratrol, quercetin and epicatechins .
Some studies have suggested that red wine, especially when drunk with a meal, offers more cardiovascular benefits than beer or spirits. Experts consider that the habits of a healthy diet may be the reason for the good health of wine drinkers beyond the choice of alcohol.
The American Heart Association (AHA) notes that no research has shown a cause and effect link between alcohol consumption and better heart health.
Wine without alcohol
You can get polyphenols from wine without drinking alcohol. Harvard notes that research has analyzed that dealcoholized wine preserves the polyphenol content . It also indicates that “increasing your intake of one to two daily servings of tea, coffee, berries, onions, or apples provides a much higher amount of polyphenols than drinking an extra glass of red wine.”
Moderate alcohol consumption defined as up to one drink a day for healthy women and two drinks a day for healthy men is generally considered safe. But as we anticipate, even low alcohol consumption can have negative health effects.
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