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A Major Whiskey Brand Is About to Start Listing Its Nutrition Facts

There has long been controversy over whether alcohol manufacturers should have to fall in line with other packaged foods and beverages and start including calorie content and nutrition facts.
A Major Whiskey Brand Is About to Start Listing Its Nutrition Facts

As a general rule of thumb, drinking is fun. That's why we do it, right?

It allows us to put aside our troubles and cares, which seem to melt away like the crushed ice in our margaritas, and embrace a different version of ourselves that is (hopefully) goofier, more confident, and generally less inhibited. Drunk You doesn't care about how much an Uber across town costs during surge pricing at 2:20 AM, or whether the person you're going home with has chronic bacne. And Drunk You almost definitely has no idea how many calories were in those four whiskey sours, which is just fine. Or is it?

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There has long been controversy over whether alcohol manufacturers should have to fall in line with other packaged foods and beverages and start including calorie content and nutrition facts. Understandably, this suggestion has been steadfastly opposed by most players in the industry. After all, it might be tougher to sell whipped-cream-flavored vodka if drinkers realize that a double shot will set you back about 250 calories. Or that a 16-ounce piña colada will set you back close to 900 calories. (Sigh… ) Let's not even do the math for an entire evening of drinking a half-dozen or more boozy, sugary concoctions.

But last spring, British alcohol giant Diageo announced that they would be taking the reins and voluntarily start labeling many of their products, which include a variety of brands from Smirnoff to Captain Morgan to Guinness. Now, they're putting their money where their mouth is.

Photo via Flickr user TFurban

Photo via Flickr user TFurban

According to Forbes, Johnnie Walker will be the first brand on its roster to feature per-serving nutritional content and calorie count outside of the US. (Last year, Crown Royal became the first whiskey brand in the world to start voluntarily including its nutrition facts on packaging, including in the US.)

The rollout will start this fall with Johnnie Walker Red, and by the end of 2017 will include some 30 million bottles in certain international markets out of the total 115 million bottles sold annually. In addition to clear labeling of the whiskey's alcohol content, the labels will also feature serving size, calorie count and sugar content per serving, and allergen warnings.

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In a statement, Diageo's chief executive Ivan Menezes said, "We believe people should have the best possible information to make informed choices about what they drink: this includes alcohol content and nutritional information per typical [serving]. Johnnie Walker is one of our largest global brands, which means these new labels will arm millions of people around the world with clear information about what's in their glass and in a way they can understand at a glance."

READ MORE: Will Alcohol Nutrition Labels Actually Make Anyone Drink Less?

Diageo will expand the labels to its other brands gradually, with Guinness and Smithwick's designated as the first beers to get the nutritional-info treatment, according to Forbes. In the US, the labels will be designed to aesthetically fall in line with those of other domestic food and beverage packaging. Interestingly, it wasn't even legal to include nutrition content on booze in the US until 2013, though it is mandatory to list ABV on all bottles, with the exception of wines between 7 percent and 14 percent alcohol. (See? This stuff is confusing and kind of arbitrary.)

And not everyone agrees that the push for these labels is coming directly from consumers. Back in April 2015, Spiros Malandrakis, an analyst of alcoholic drinks at Euromonitor International, told MUNCHIES: "I do not think there is a bottom-up consumer demand for such labels. Millennial and Gen-X generations have an interest in this kind of thing—we see that in packaged foods. But I have to remind corporations that the way people think is not necessarily the way we eat. Drinking has been a hedonistically driven activity for the last 5,000 years, and I do not foresee people changing that primarily based on the nutritional value."

Maybe not. But as to whether or not we should be more nutritionally mindful while getting our fade on… well, that remains up in the air. And anyways, if you read a label and don't like what you see, that bummed-out feeling is probably something a stiff drink couldn't fix.

Have a great weekend, and enjoy your 1,100 calories worth of gin and tonics tonight!