Coming to Your Beer Can Soon: Calorie Count

8 out of 10 beers sold in US will soon include nutritional info
By Evann Gastaldo,  Newser Staff
Posted Jul 13, 2016 11:57 AM CDT
Coming to Your Beer Can Soon: Calorie Count
In this Wednesday, March 2, 2011, file photo, Budweiser cans run through a filling machine at the Anheuser-Busch brewery in the Van Nuys area of Los Angeles.   (AP Photo/Reed Saxon, File)

Be prepared: Drinking beer is about to get a little less fun. The four biggest brewers in the US will be listing nutritional information on their beers—which means that every time you take a swig, you'll come face to face with the exact calorie count of the beer you're ingesting. More than eight out of 10 beers sold in the country will have the labels, Fortune reports. The move comes as a result of new guidelines from the industry's national trade association, the Beer Institute, which recommends breweries become fully compliant with the voluntary guidelines by 2020. Anheuser-Busch InBev, MillerCoors, Heineken, Constellation Brands, North American Breweries, and the Craft Brew Alliance all agreed to the new guidelines.

The labels will also include information about carbohydrates, protein, fat, and of course, alcohol by volume. Prior to a May 2013 ruling by the US Treasury's Alcohol Tax and Trade Bureau, alcoholic beverage companies weren't actually allowed to include nutritional information on their labels, though many brewers have recently been offering the information online. And, as Live Science notes, even after that ruling, many alcoholic beverage manufacturers weren't required to list nutritional info because their products are regulated differently than other food and beverage products. It's time for that to change, says one consumer advocate: "Alcohol can be a major source of calories for many Americans, and the absence of calorie labeling on cans and bottles has helped obscure that." (More beer stories.)

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