In this Article

• What is alcohol?
• How is alcohol made?
• How is alcohol metabolized?
• Does alcohol impact your weight?
• How does alcohol affect your blood sugar?
• Does alcohol contribute to vitamin and mineral deficiencies?
• Do beverages with artificial sweeteners react with alcohol?
• Are there health benefits to consuming alcohol?
• Which alcohol is best to consume?
• Are the drinks with caffeine and alcohol safe?
• How much alcohol can you safely consume?
• Alcohol and Nutrition Index

Do beverages with artificial sweeteners react with alcohol?

The low-carb-dieting craze has led to an increased consumption of diet beverages being used in mixed alcoholic drinks. Premixed alcoholic drinks were usually made with sugar-sweetened beverages like juice and soda. The presence of sugar was thought to decrease the rapidity with which alcohol would empty from the stomach and get absorbed in the small intestines, but nothing was known about how artificial sweeteners would impact the absorption of alcohol.

A recent study examined the difference in blood alcohol levels from drinks containing sweetened (regular) versus artificially sweetened (diet) beverages. This study found a significant difference in blood alcohol levels between the two drinks. In fact, the "diet" beverage produced blood alcohol levels that would be considered illegal for driving in many jurisdictions, while comparable quantities of the "regular" beverage did not. This poses a potentially dangerous situation, and it is clear that there should be separate guidelines for the safe consumption of artificially sweetened alcoholic beverages.

Are there health benefits to consuming alcohol?

Many people have heard that there are health benefits to alcohol and claim to consume it for that reason. All reported benefits are limited to an intake at or below the U.S. Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommendations of one drink per day or less for women and two or fewer drinks per day for men.

There has been an association described between alcohol and reduced risk of coronary heart disease (CHD). The reason for this is that alcohol helps raise the levels of high density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol and lowers plasma fibrinogen levels, which contribute to blood clotting.

A Danish study of 27,178 men and 29,875 women who were free of CHD monitored their intake of alcohol over 5.7 years. The men who drank the most alcohol had a lower risk of CHD. One drink a week lowered the risk by about 7%, two to four drinks by 22%, and five or six drinks a week by 29%. Those who drank every day had a 41% lower risk of heart disease than those who did not drink at all. The women also experienced a decrease in risk, but the frequency of drinking did not have the same impact as with the men. One drink a week lowered the risk by 36%, but daily drinking lowered it by 35%. The limitation to this study was that binge drinking and the number of drinks at each occasion were not studied. The pattern of drinking seems important for the possible cardioprotective effect of alcohol, and the risk of CHD is generally lower for steady versus binge drinking. Higher drinking levels increase the risk of death from cancer, liver cirrhosis, trauma, and other types of heart disease.