Malt Beverages and Your Health: Why Your Low Calorie Hard Seltzer Isn't So Healthy Afterall
Table Of Contents
What Is Malt Liquor? What is a malt beverage?
Is Malt Liquor Good For You?
What do malt beverages contain?
What does malt liquor/a malt beverage do to your body?
Is malt liquor more fattening than beer?
How can malt liquor make you sick?
How do Malt Beverages Affect Your Health?
Is vodka a malt liquor?
Often positioned as a healthful, low carb and lower calorie alternative to beer, mixed drinks, or a glass of wine, malt beverages have recently skyrocketed in popularity and while many people enjoy them as a refreshing beverage on a hot day, not many know about the health risks associated with drinking them. Malt liquor in particular has been linked to negative health outcomes such as heart disease, obesity, liver disease, and cancer. So why are these drinks successfully positioned as healthful alternatives to other alcoholic beverages? And is there really anything that can be done to make them healthier?
What is malt liquor? What is a malt beverage?
To be clear, two terms are often used interchangeably when discussing malt drinks: malt liquor and malt beverage. What do these mean? Are malt beverages and malt liquor the same thing?
Let’s start with malt beverage. Simply put, a malt beverage is an alcoholic drink made from the fermentation of grains like barley, hops, etc. It is not distilled.
Malt liquor, on the other hand, is generally defined as a malt beverage with an ABV (alcohol by volume) of 5% or more, meaning that a drink could be both a malt beverage and malt liquor.
Why make the distinction? The term malt liquor can be confusing as liquors are typically made through distillation; however, no malt beverage is distilled.
What kinds of drinks are malt beverages?
Most beers, hard seltzers, and cooler-style drinks (like Mike's Hard Lemonade and Smirnoff Ice) are malt beverages.
Is Malt Liquor Good For You?
It's not so much that malt liquor is bad for you and other alcohol is 'good' for you. No alcohol is truly 'good' or healthful. Consuming it is just a choice that people tend to make. You can choose to consume higher or lower-quality beverages, all of which impact how you feel both while consuming them and the morning after.
Malt beverages aren't distilled; in fact, they are often produced using grains left over from beer production. This means it is often the lowest grade of alcohol that is able to be produced. Malt drinks are like the junk food of alcoholic beverages. The fact that it's usually done so at a relatively cheap price point while yielding a decent proof is a part of why these drinks are so prolific.
Distillation purifies liquor; it filters and clarifies the alcohol. Because the alcohol in malt beverages isn't distilled, impurities and toxins that could be removed aren't, yielding a much lower quality alcoholic drink. Without those additional layers of filtering and clarification the end product isn't inherently worse for you than its distilled alternative, but it's definitely not doing you any favors in the way that you feel the next day.
There's a reason that consuming the same amount of a malt beverage as you would other drinks with the same percent alcohol usually leaves you feeling fuzzier and foggier the next day.
What do malt beverages contain?
In addition to alcohol, malt beverages may contain fruit juices, carbonated water, or natural flavors. They are often ready to drink and shelf-stable in a can or bottle.
Most popular brands of hard seltzers currently available (like White Claw) are actually malt beverages, as are many ‘hard’ drinks like lemonades, teas, and even some wine coolers.
What does malt liquor/a malt beverage do to your body?
Due to the lack of purity and clarification for this low grade of alcohol, you typically see day-after effects that are on par with heavy drinking, even at times when the same amount of alcohol from something other than a malt beverage wouldn't cause those effects. For example, you could have two martinis made from a distilled vodka and feel fewer or less-intense day-after effects than two seltzers that are only four and a half percent alcohol by volume. Even though the seltzers have a lower alcohol content than the martinis, the alcohol in your seltzer contains more toxins and impurities.
This is clearly felt when you experience day-after effects like dehydration, brain fog, and a crippling headache (also a result of dehydration). These effects are much more intense when heavily and regularly consuming malt beverages as compared to distilled drinks due to the impurities present in them.
Is malt liquor more fattening than beer?
Malt beverages and beer are actually pretty on par as far as nutritional content. They yield the same amount of calories per ounce of alcohol in them. That said, sugars, caramels, and even milk may be added for flavor and color in the brewing process (especially when brewing craft beers). That's where you see a difference in calories between beer and other malt beverages.
How can malt liquor make you sick?
Human beings get sick from alcohol due to the production of a chemical in the body called acetaldehyde. This chemical is produced when alcohol comes into contact with your liver.
Since malt liquor is less purified and less refined, it triggers a higher release of this and other chemicals (like the stress hormone cortisol) in your body. That manifests in the way you feel the next day (sluggishness, brain fog, etc.).
How do Malt Beverages Affect Your Health?
Long-term consumption of any sort of alcoholic product is definitely going to affect your health. These effects are well documented.
However, the way malt beverages are served (with sugars, artificial sweeteners flavors, colors, etc. added to the drink) usually yields drinks that are higher in calories and lower in quality.
Is malt liquor worse for you than other alcoholic beverages? That's like asking if chili cheese fries are worse for you than a baked potato. At their core they are basically the same, but the additions and changes made to those fries make all the difference in the way that your body will digest them.
Is vodka a malt liquor?
Vodka is not a malt liquor. This is why Pivot Premium Cocktail Company has opted to use it in their hard seltzers.
Using vodka makes a cleaner product and a better-tasting cocktail. Less vodka is needed to yield the desired percent alcohol (Pivot products have a 5.5%ABV) and it's lower in calories. This leaves a cleaner, purer product that tastes a lot better and gets a consumer feeling good quite a bit faster than a 4% malt beverage seltzer would.
Pivot Premium Cocktails
Pivot Premium Cocktails are electrolyte-based vodka seltzers made from all-natural ingredients and no artificial sweeteners. Gluten-free, with no added sugar, and crafted on a botanical base rich in naturally occurring electrolytes, these canned cocktails are ideal for someone who wants to maximize buzz and minimize day-after fuzz.
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