116: The Impact of Alcohol on Health, and How to Calculate a Standard Drink, with Kathleen Zelman, MS, RDN

Have you ever wondered how much impact beer, wine, and spirits have on your health and longevity? The US Dietary Guidelines recommend limiting the number of alcoholic beverages we consume, but that can be pretty confusing. How do we even know how much alcohol is considered moderate and how much is too much? Or if we’re offered a cocktail at a party, how do we know how much alcohol is in it? My friend, and fellow dietician, Kathleen Zelman is joining us today to answer all those questions and tell us how moderate alcohol consumption can affect our health. She will also explain how alcohol can sabotage our well-being and longevity. Kathleen Zelman is a food, nutrition, and media communications consultant, co-host of the new podcast, True Health Revealed, and owner of No Nonsense Nutrition. Kathleen helped launch WebMD and spent seventeen years as their Director of Nutrition. Kathleen has received many awards throughout her career, including the prestigious Lenna Frances Cooper Memorial Award from the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics in recognition of her distinguished career and remarkable contributions to the dietetics profession.  Kathleen is also a consultant for the Distilled Spirits Council (DISCUS), so she is savvy on the subject of alcohol. She is here to give us the scoop on alcohol and talk about a new online calculator designed to help us figure out how much alcohol we are drinking. We will also share some snazzy ideas for cocktails and mocktails!

Show highlights:

• Kathleen is excited about her new podcast that launched in January! She and her co-host, Dr. Tom Rifai, are doing it on behalf of the True Health Initiative, a non-profit organization that wants to ensure that they get information to consumers, translate science, and give consumers evidence-based facts. 
• Dr. Eric Rimm, a Harvard professor and true expert on alcohol, was on Kathleen’s podcast. He said it's okay to have a glass of wine now and then. 
• What does moderation mean for men and women, and how does that translate into beer, wine, and spirits?
• To find out what up to one drink per day looks like, go to www.standarddrinks.org to find a calculator. One standard drink is one and a half ounces of 80-proof spirits, a 12-ounce bottle of regular 5% alcohol beer, or five ounces of 12% volume wine.
• An exercise to do at home is to measure five ounces of wine and pour it into different glasses to see what a standard drink looks like.
• Become aware of what you are drinking and what the alcohol content is. Most wines have 12% alcohol, but some have much higher alcohol content- 15 or 16%.
• Most ready-to-drink canned cocktails are 12 ounces and have 5% alcohol content. However, some brands could contain up to 8 or 10% alcohol, so make sure you know how concentrated they are before drinking them. The information is on the label.
• Get to know how much you are drinking using the .css-j9qmi7{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:row;-ms-flex-direction:row;flex-direction:row;font-weight:700;margin-bottom:1rem;margin-top:2.8rem;width:100%;-webkit-box-pack:start;-ms-flex-pack:start;-webkit-justify-content:start;justify-content:start;padding-left:5rem;}@media only screen and (max-width: 599px){.css-j9qmi7{padding-left:0;-webkit-box-pack:center;-ms-flex-pack:center;-webkit-justify-content:center;justify-content:center;}}.css-j9qmi7 svg{fill:#27292D;}.css-j9qmi7 .eagfbvw0{-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;color:#27292D;}