Is Your Cocktail Ultra-Processed? Nutrition Labels Won’t Tell You

IIf you’ve browsed the refrigerated section of a liquor store lately, you’ve probably seen a bunch of pre-made cocktails on display – piña coladas, vodka mules, rum and Cokes, even a mojito. And if you’ve opened one, you may have thought, “A little sweet for my taste, but not bad.” Turn the bottle over and peer at the nutrition facts label to find out exactly how much sugar or artificial sweetener it contains … and you’ll likely come away empty-handed.

Many ready-made cocktails and alcopops contain just as much sugar as carbonated drinks like Coca-Cola. All that sugar – and other additives – means that many alcoholic beverages fall into the “ultra-processed foods” (UPF) category. But unlike other sugary drinks, most alcoholic beverages are not required to list nutritional information – creating a loophole for ultra-processed foods to unknowingly find their way into our diets.

So how do you know what’s in your after-dinner drink or cocktail when you go out? It’s complicated.

What makes alcohol ultra-processed?

The idea of ​​ultra-processed foods was first introduced by Carlos Monteiro, a professor of nutrition and public health at the University of São Paulo in Brazil. In 2009, Monteiro argued that nutritionists should pay attention not only to the nutrients in foods – such as sugar, fat and sodium – but also to the amount of processing that goes into formulating them.

While some foods, like raw vegetables and dried fruits, are “unprocessed” or “minimally processed,” the majority of foods are “processed” in some way (think canned peaches, freshly baked bread, cheese, or pickled vegetables). Not all processing is inherently unhealthy—in fact, it has allowed us to combat hunger by preserving foods year-round and to counteract vitamin deficiencies by nutritionally fortifying our foods.

Since the 1980s, however, a growing percentage of the world’s food supply has become “ultra-processed” — that is, industrially formulated by combining additives (such as artificial colors and preservatives) and substances extracted from food (such as hydrogenated fats and starches). Today’s ultra-processed foods include everything from packaged breads to sugary breakfast cereals to frozen dinners — and they have been linked to a host of health problems, including diabetes, obesity, depression and certain cancers.

It is difficult to say whether alcoholic beverages count as UPFs, Monteiro and colleagues wrote in 2019But they do provide some general guidelines: Fermented beverages like beer, cider, and wine are considered “processed” and “ultra-processed” if they have been fermented and the resulting alcohol has then been distilled – like whiskey, gin, rum, and vodka.

For example, while wine is made by fermenting grapes, a spirit like brandy is made by first fermenting grapes into wine. The wine is then heated until it becomes a vapor, and the vapor is condensed back into a liquid with a much higher alcohol content, says Gavin Lavi Sacks, a professor of food science at Cornell University and author of Understanding Wine Chemistry.

The concept of ultra-processed foods is still new, and researchers disagree on exactly which foods fall under this category. There is a notable difference between Cheetos, which are designed to be maximally addictive, and distilled beverages, which are specifically designed for this purpose. hundreds of years.

Another way to determine if an alcoholic beverage is UPF is to look at the ingredients. As with many foods, additional ingredients can be added to alcohol during processing. Some of these may be used to standardize the product they can offer from year to year (since grapes, barley, hops, and other base ingredients are crops that can vary in quality from year to year). Other additives include caramel coloring to make batches of tequila from different years look the same before they’re blended, or cream of tartar to add acidity to a wine that has lost its acidity.

Why It’s Hard to Figure Out Which Drinks Contain UPF

But it can be tricky to tell exactly what additives are in an alcoholic beverage, since most aren’t required to print ingredient labels or nutritional facts. In the U.S., alcohol is regulated by the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, part of the Treasury Department (with a few exceptions, like hard seltzers and wine with less than 7% alcohol by volume) – not the Food and Drug Administration.

The reasoning goes back to the Prohibition era. It was to ensure that “the distribution channels were not controlled by unsavory actors,” Sacks said. Furthermore, “alcohol was not part of a nutritious diet, contrary to what the FDA regulated, which was part of the average person’s diet.”

However, there are a few ways consumers can find out what additives are in a drink.

While the Tax and Trade Bureau, or TTB, doesn’t require nutritional labels, it does have fairly strict standards of identity. For wine, Sacks says, that means any additives “must be something that’s naturally occurring in grapes or wine.” If a producer wants to add something outside of the TTB’s standards, approved list If they remove any additives (and processing aids, which don’t remain in the final product), they would have to relabel the product as “flavored wine” and then add an ingredients list. Some producers have started using the term “natural wine” to refer to wine made with minimal intervention, but the term is not well-regulated in the U.S., meaning they can still sometimes smuggle in sulfites and other additives.

“We know that dozens of additives are allowed in wine and even more in beer and cocktails. As consumers, we deserve to know which products contain which additives so we can make informed choices about what we put in our bodies,” said Eva Greenthal, senior policy scientist at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a food policy advocacy group.

The additives allowed in distilled spirits vary, but the most common are glycerin (a sugar alcohol) and caramel coloring. (The TTB explains on its website website that all substances “generally recognized as safe” and food and colorants “approved for their intended use” can be used in alcoholic beverages.)

Changes may be coming

But some advocates are calling for change.

The U.S. last updated its alcohol warning labels in 1989 to discourage drinking during pregnancy or before driving. Now it is considering adding additional labels. In February, the agency held listening sessions to receive public input on labels that list alcohol percentage, nutritional information, allergens and ingredients.

However, Greenthal notes that the TTB’s rulemaking process has been delayed four times, so it’s unclear when or if these changes will be implemented.

Getting nutrition warning labels on alcohol would be a big step, says Marissa G. Hall, a professor of health behavior at the Gillings School of Global Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, who is currently researching how the U.S. government can best design alcohol warning labels. But ultimately, she says, the biggest health concern surrounding alcoholic beverages isn’t UPF — it’s the alcohol itself, which has been linked to many types of cancer.

Proponents say that getting labeling on alcoholic beverages would be a big step toward transparency. But it’s just a starting point in changing American consumers’ — and manufacturers’ — love affair with ultra-processed products.