why’ doesn’t zero calorie alcohol exist? And could it possibly be something that can?
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ethanol itself has an energy content of about 7 kilocalories per gram. a zero calorie alcohol beverage would just be water.
because alcohol the molecule (Ethanol) ITS SELF has calories.
If you could make a 0 calorie alcohol, thats not alcohol, at best its another drug with the same taste and effect, but its not alcohol.
Because the body converts alcohol to sugar. We extract 7 calories per gram but its taxing on the liver which has to produce the enzymes to handle it and break it down.
To make zero calorie soft drinks, we have to replace the sugar (which has calories) with something else that produces the same effect (sweet taste). That something else is a chemical we call artificial sweetener. To do the same with alcohol, we’d have to replace the _alcohol itself_ (which has calories) with something else that produces the same effect. That something else is a chemical we call drugs. You could try crushing up some benzodiazepines and mixing them with water. But a zero-calorie alcohol drink is literally impossible.
One way to measure calories is to burn it and see how much heat it gives off because that’s how much “energy” is in the food/drink. Calories are literally just energy and since alcohol is very flammable, you can bet it’s going to have calories.
As people have explained elsewhere, zero-calorie alcohol is definitionally impossible. That said, in terms of something with zero calories that *acts* like alcohol, it largely depends on what you want from the hypothetical drink.
If you just want the same flavors, then yes, it’s currently possible to create drinks similar to certain spirits without containing any alcohol. It’s something that a number of companies have been releasing for the past several years – just search for NA spirits – and they’re likely to continue improving.
If you want the *feeling* of alcohol with zero calories, though, that’s going to be a whole lot tougher. Alcohol intoxication is the result of enhancing and inhibiting certain groups of neurotransmitters in the brain; it’s *plausible* that someone could invent a drug that does the same, but unlikely that such a thing would ever reach a consumer level.
Ethyl Alcohol or ethanol itself is a macronutrient, like carbohydrates, fats, and protein. It’s fairly energy dense as other posters have said. You can’t make ethyl alcohol consumption calorie free as the body uses it as fuel.
We have found some ways to use certain alcohols, namely sugar alcohols, in ways that are very low calorie. The chemistry (and biochemistry) is complex, but the basic level is we are using chemicals that are similar to the chemicals we want to be tasting or eating, but that the body does not easily digest. There are downsides to this, as things that the body cannot digest becomes something that often makes it’s way quickly through the digestive system. So the tradeoff to zero calorie foods that are engineered to taste similar to the food they are replacing, is often that they cause gastric distress and make you need to use the toilet urgently. And we have tried this before with fats, such as Olestra.
This begs the question: if you were to design a chemical to replace ethanol, what are you actually looking for? Ethanol itself has a neutral, slightly bitter flavor. Most people don’t drink pure ethanol without some additional things in it. Even vodka has stuff other than just ethanol and water, although it’s the closest. Most people also don’t drink vodka, even high quality vodka, for the flavor on its own, though.
The effect most people are looking for from alcohol is it’s effect as a drug, rather than as a food. So perhaps what you’re really asking is, can we make a drug that affects people like alcohol, but that is zero calorie? That’s a very different question from just “making alcohol calorie free”, but the designer drug market exists entirely because people are looking for drugs that effect people in various ways.
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