why’ doesn’t zero calorie alcohol exist? And could it possibly be something that can?
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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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