BMJ: Make calorie labels
compulsory on all alcoholic drinks, says public health expert There is no reason
why calories in alcohol should be treated any differently from those in food. Calorie counts should be mandatory on all alcoholic drinks as
a matter of urgency, argues a leading public health doctor in The BMJ this week. Fiona Sim, Chair of the Royal Society for Public Health, says
alcoholic drinks contribute to obesity and the law “should require restaurant
menus and labels to make energy content explicit in addition to alcohol
content.”
She explains that, since 2011, packaged foods in the European
Union have been subject to regulation requiring labelling with their
ingredients and nutritional information, including energy content (calories). But
drinks that contain more than 1.2% alcohol by volume are exempt and consumers
do not know what is in them.
And she points out that a European Commission report to
consider exclusions from the regulation, including calorie labelling of
alcoholic drinks, “is now several months overdue, and no revised publication
date has been announced.”
Among adults who drink, an estimated 10% of their daily
calorie intake comes from alcohol, writes Sim. Yet a recent survey
found that 80% of the 2,117
adults questioned did not know the calorie content of common drinks, and most
were completely unaware that alcohol contributed to the total calories that
they consumed.
“Most women, for example, do not realise that two large
glasses of wine, containing 370 calories, comprise almost a fifth of their
daily recommended energy intake, as well as containing more than the
recommended daily limit of alcohol units,” she explains.
Many respondents were also in favour of calorie labelling on
alcoholic drinks.
Some alcoholic drink manufacturers have already begun to
introduce nutritional labelling, which suggests there is no commercial
disadvantage in such a move, says Sim. However, she warns that information
provided to consumers must be “accurate, prominent, and meaningful.”
The US Food and Drug Administration has mandated calorie
labelling on alcoholic drinks from December 2015 in US restaurant chains with
20 or more outlets, she writes. On this side of the Atlantic the Public Health
(Alcohol) Bill 2015 will, if passed, make Ireland the first EU country to
insist on calorie labelling on alcoholic drinks.
Finally, she says, those of us in clinical practice regularly
ask patients about their weight, eating habits, and exercise in the context of
primary or secondary prevention, but how many of us routinely ask about their
calories from alcohol?
It is time that we started, she concludes.