Alcoholic drinks could come with a calorie count

WASHINGTON — Alcoholic beverages soon could have nutritional labels like those on food packaging, but only if the producers want to put them there.

The Treasury Department, which regulates alcohol, said this past week that beer, wine and spirits companies can use labels that include serving size, servings per container, calories, carbohydrates, protein and fat per serving. Such package labels have never before been approved.

The labels are voluntary, so it will be up to beverage companies to decide whether to use them on their products.

The decision is a temporary, first step while the Alcohol and Tobacco Trade and Tax Bureau, or TTB, continues to consider final rules on alcohol labels. Rules proposed in 2007 would have made labels mandatory, but the agency never made the rules final.

The labeling regulation, issued Tuesday, comes after a decade of lobbying by hard-liquor companies and consumer groups, with clearly different goals.

The liquor companies want to advertise low calories and low carbohydrates in their products. Consumer groups want alcoholic drinks to have the same transparency as packaged foods, which are required to be labeled.

Not all alcohol companies are expected to use labels. Among those that may take a pass are beer companies, which don’t want consumers counting calories, and winemakers, which don’t want to ruin the sleek look of their bottles.

The beer industry praised the agency for acknowledging that labels should take into account variations in the concentration of alcohol content in different products.

The industry has opposed the idea of defining serving size by fluid ounces of pure alcohol — or as 12 ounces of beer, 5 ounces of wine or 1.5 ounces of 80proof liquor — on the grounds that you may get more depending on what else is in the drink and the accuracy of the bartender.

The ruling would allow the labels to declare alcohol content as a percentage of alcohol by volume, the approach favored by the beer industry.

Joe McClain, president of the Beer Institute, said the beer industry is pleased that the ruling provides “substantial flexibility” in terms of the format and placement of the disclosure on packaging.

It is unclear whether beer companies will actually use the labels, however. Consumer advocates criticized the regulation. “It doesn’t reflect any concern about public health,” said Michael Jacobson, director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest. He said the rules are too close to what the alcohol companies had sought.

Consumer advocates have said that listing alcohol content should be mandatory so consumers know how much they are drinking.

Jacobson and others also support having calorie counts on labels, but they said the labels should not include nutrients that make the alcohol seem more like a food.