Empty calories; putting on pounds with poor nutrition

FDA Consumer, Nov, 1986 by Roger W. Miller

Empty Calories: Putting on Pounds with Poor Nutrition

"Empty calories' is probably an empty term to many people. It sounds contradictory. Like maybe empty calories are calories that don't count. Such is not at all the case. Empty calories are calories obtained from foods that have little other nutritional value. Sugar and alcohol are examples. Those foods supply energy (calories), but virtually nothing else that builds or rebuilds the body.

If sweets and alcoholic beverages are heavily consumed instead of foods that have other values, the result could be a diet that is in deficit nutritionally. If the diet already provides ample calories, the empty calories will have the effect of literally tipping the scales.

Most foods provide some nutritional value along with calories. Even fat is important to a proper diet. But its caloric content is high--nine calories per gram compared to four for protein or carbohydrates and seven for alcohol--and experts generally agree that we get too much of it. About 40 percent of our calories come from fat; 30 percent would be better.

Studies show that empty-calorie foods also account for a high proportion of our caloric intake. Sugars provide us with about 25 percent of our calories. And that is counting only sugar that is added to foods. Some sugars occur naturally, such as in honey and fruits. (Note that the reference is to sugars; it's plural because the term includes not only table sugar, or sucrose, but also other kinds of sugars, such as fructose, glucose and lactose, that are used in many food products.)

Alcohol, too, may add considerably to the total calorie count of the two-thirds of the adult population who are drinkers, researchers have found. Reporting in the April 1983 issue of the Journal of the American Dietetic Association, a team led by Carol T. Windham, Ph.D., of Utah State University, concluded that "for those individuals who reported consuming alcohol, an average of 388 calories [per day], or approximately 19 percent of the total dietary calories, was contributed by alcoholic beverages.'

Virginia Hellers, Ph.D., and Linda K. Massey, Ph.D., of Washington State University, writing in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, February 1985, told of a long-term study of 179 middle-class male drinkers in the state of Washington. They found that heavy drinkers got up to 30 percent of their calories from booze. They also noted that "alcohol consumption decreased intake of other energy sources and diminished the nutrient density of the diets of both moderate and heavy drinkers.' In other words, the more they imbibed, the less they ate of more nutritious foods.

Surprisingly, Drs. Hellers and Massey didn't find that the diets of heavy drinkers were particularly low in nutrients. In fact, they failed to meet the U.S. Recommended Daily Allowances (RDAs) for only three nutrients--vitamins A and C and thiamine. However, they had a hefty intake of calories, a mean of 2,710 a day. Dr. Windham and her co-workers found that women didn't take in that many calories, but the researchers were bothered by the amount that came from alcoholic beverages.

"Teenage girls and women who drink may be of particular concern with respect to the nutrient density of their diets,' they wrote. "Caloric contribution from alcoholic beverages ranged from 17.2 to 24 percent [of total calories] for 15- to 50-year-old females who reported consuming alcohol, whereas the total [daily] caloric intake for those women averaged [only] 1,562 to 1,693 calories.'

Alcoholic beverages are produced from sugar that's undergone fermentation from sources such as grapes (wine), grains (beer and whiskey), molasses and cane sugar (rum), and potatoes (vodka). In the fermentation process, sugar is converted to alcohol. When the alcohol is consumed, it is processed by the liver to produce energy. The calories from foods-- carbohydrates, fats and protein--also provide energy. If more calories are taken in than are needed, they are stored in the body, often as fat.

For an example of the difference between an empty-calorie food and one that has better nutrient density, in the jargon of the experts, see pages 21 and 22. The comparison, based on information from U.S. Department of Agriculture Handbook No. 456, The Nutritive Value of American Foods, is between a homemade cupcake and a large baked potato with a pat of butter. The potato was selected because it is often thought of as being high in calories. Yet the seven-ounce potato, even with butter, has but 175 calories, or 25 per ounce. The 1 2/3-ounce cupcake has nearly as many--170, which comes to 102 per ounce of food.

The nutrition labels for the two items spell out the differences clearly. The baked potato and butter have less fat and sodium. They provide the full RDA for thiamine as well as half the RDA for vitamin C. On the other hand, one would have to eat a lot of cupcakes (and calories) to get anything of nutritional value.

If nutrition labels were prepared for alcoholic beverages, the values would be about as poor as for the cupcake or other high-sugar foods. Beer and wine contain some nutrients from the products from which they are made. (A 12-ounce beer meets the RDA for niacin, but that's the most easily obtained of all the vitamins.) But the hard spirits--such as whiskey, gin, vodka and rum--are produced by distillation, which separates the alcohol from the nutrients in the starting materials, so they have virtually nothing of nutritional value.