Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff production of I Heart Radio. Hey
Speaker 1: brain Stuff, Lauren Vogel bomb here. If you feel like
Speaker 1: you can't even consider consuming a candy bar without being
Speaker 1: confronted with its chloric content, you're right. The same thing
Speaker 1: goes for just about every piece of packaged food you
Speaker 1: see in stores, plus every bottled, canned, or carton beverage.
Speaker 1: A nutrition facts label depicts detailed info on the amounts
Speaker 1: of fat, sugar, sodium, and more found inside. But while
Speaker 1: your favorite breakfast cereals, sodas, and sandwich fixings are subject
Speaker 1: this type of in your face transparency, you may have
Speaker 1: noticed that booze is typically off the hook, residing behind
Speaker 1: factless labels. So what gives? The answer lies in the
Speaker 1: powers that be. While the Food and Drug Administration or
Speaker 1: FDA regulates the safety of you guessed it food, including
Speaker 1: non alcoholic beverages, it doesn't govern the alcohol industry. That
Speaker 1: honor belongs to the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade
Speaker 1: Bureau or t t B, an agency that doesn't require labeling.
Speaker 1: While beer, wine and spirits companies aren't legally mandated to
Speaker 1: print the nutritional info on their products, consumer advocates have
Speaker 1: been calling for the t t B to change that,
Speaker 1: and it has sort of in The agency made nutrition
Speaker 1: labels optional for alcohol, but some health experts don't feel
Speaker 1: the move was bold enough. Johns Hopkins public health researcher
Speaker 1: Sarah Blake told vox in many adults take in a
Speaker 1: tremendous amount of calories from alcohol, and I have no
Speaker 1: idea she should know. Her work revealed that the average
Speaker 1: American regularly consumes four hundred calories a day from alcohol alone.
Speaker 1: A kind of I p A contains about two hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty calories, a glass of red wine has about
Speaker 1: a hundred and twenty five, and a shot of liquor
Speaker 1: has about a hundred. The reasons behind the disparity in
Speaker 1: label requirements between the f d A and t t
Speaker 1: B goes back to Prohibition. When the ban on the
Speaker 1: production and distribution of alcohol in America came to an end,
Speaker 1: Congress passed the Alcohol Administration Act of five, which eventually
Speaker 1: to the establishment of the t t B, but it's
Speaker 1: rules around labeling have historically been a bit messy. Substances
Speaker 1: that people might be sensitive to, like sulf fights, have
Speaker 1: to be labeled, but other ingredients do not. Wines that
Speaker 1: contain fourteen percent alcohol or more have to display alcohol content,
Speaker 1: while wines from seven to four percent don't have to
Speaker 1: list alcohol content if they're considered light or table. Oh
Speaker 1: and wines with less than seven percent alcohol. Those aren't
Speaker 1: regulated by the t t B at all. Those are
Speaker 1: under the jurisdiction of the f d A, and so
Speaker 1: they're required to display nutrition facts labels. Confusing, isn't it?
Speaker 1: A Few brands Corona Light, Guinness, Heineken, and Coarse Light
Speaker 1: do put calories and some nutrition information, though not the
Speaker 1: ingredients on their bottles or packaging, but it's typically very
Speaker 1: small print or hard to find. You might even have
Speaker 1: to look on the bottom of the six pack to
Speaker 1: find it. Who looks there. Bud Light, on the other hand,
Speaker 1: began voluntarily including obvious labels listing its beers calories, fat, carbohydrates,
Speaker 1: and protein per serving, as well as other ingredients in
Speaker 1: February of twenty nineteen. Since then, Annheuser Busch has added
Speaker 1: similar labeling to some of its other bud Light line beers,
Speaker 1: including bud Light Lime, bud Light Orange, and bud Light
Speaker 1: lemon TEA change is brewing, though, at least in the
Speaker 1: beer industry, industry leaders including Anaheiuser Busch, Miller Coors, Heineken
Speaker 1: US A Constellation brand beer division, North American Breweries, and
Speaker 1: craft Brew Alliance, which together produce more than of the
Speaker 1: volume of beer sold in the United States, have agreed
Speaker 1: to voluntarily display nutrition facts by Today's episode were written
Speaker 1: by Michelle Konstantinovski and produced by Tyler Clang. Brain Stuff
Speaker 1: is a production of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works. For
Speaker 1: ruin this and lots of other well labeled topics, visit
Speaker 1: our home planet, how stuff works dot com, and for
Speaker 1: more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.