The Unhealthiest Drinks You’re Sipping on This Holiday Season—Both Alcoholic and Non-Alcoholic

From work Christmas parties to popping champagne corks at New Year, the holiday season can be a boozy one, even for the most infrequent or sensible of drinkers.

A survey of drinkers and festive partyers in the UK, for instance, found that almost two-thirds of Brits admit to drinking more over Christmas than the rest of the year (while more than half will unknowingly binge drink on the big day itself, drinking more than six units of alcohol for a woman, or more than eight units for a man). 

Drinking isn’t exactly the healthiest habit to begin with, of course. But now a new study by online medical practice ZAVA has uncovered just how unhealthy our favorite festive tipples actually are—and, for good measure, how even avoiding alcohol can still lead to people consuming something that isn’t quite as healthy as it seems. 

1. The Unhealthiest Alcoholic Holiday Drinks
2. The Unhealthiest Alcohol-Free Holiday Drinks

The Unhealthiest Alcoholic Holiday Drinks

1. Piña Colada

It’s bad news for cocktail drinkers, unfortunately, as a typical piña colada was found to contain a remarkable 58g of sugar and 320 calories per serving. That high sugar content is due to the cocktail’s notoriously sweet ingredients of pineapple juice, cream of coconut, and rum.

2. Margarita

Although not quite as sweet as a piña colada, with only 13g of sugar per serving, a typical margarita still packs a calorific punch, with 248 calories on average per glass. A classic margarita might not be quite as sweet as a commercial or frozen one, but you’re still looking at over 200 calories in each glass. 

3. Espresso Martini

It’s three for three for the cocktail drinkers, with an espresso martini ranked in third place overall in the ZAVA survey. Depending on what mixers or syrups your espresso martini contains, you can expect an average of 225 calories per serving, with around 20g of sugar. 

4. Lager

There are scores of different types of lager, of course, and so not all canned or draft lagers will be quite as bad as others. That being said, the study found that you can expect a typical pint to come in around 200 calories on average.

5. Guinness

Rounding out the top 5 is the world’s most popular stout. A standard pint of Guinness comes in at around 210 calories, though, unlike some lagers, it has a relatively small sugar content compared to the drinks at the top of this list. 

Elsewhere in the top 10, four more sugar-filled cocktails and mixed drinks made the unhealthier end of the ZAVA list, with a traditional Long Island iced tea ranked in sixth place (27g of sugar, 207 calories), alongside a Pimms in seventh place (25g, 169 cals), and both a traditional Hugo Spritz and Aperol Spritz in eighth and ninth place overall. A standard glass of red wine (3g, 123 cals) completed the lineup.

The Unhealthiest Alcohol-Free Holiday Drinks

1. Energy Drink

Whether you’re using it as a mixer or just as a way of getting yourself through the day, energy drinks might well be on your Christmas list this year. But while different brands have different recipes, understandably, the nutritional content of these often high-sugar and high-caffeine choices can leave a lot to be desired: the ZAVA study crowned energy drinks as their first-place unhealthiest alcohol-free drink, with an average sugar content of 78g, and an average of 335 calories per serving.

2. Orange Juice, 3. Grape Juice, 4. Canned or Bottled Lemon Water

Unfortunately, if you find yourself opting for a fruit juice in place of an alcoholic drink, you might not be making as healthy a choice as you might think. Although fruit juices might not be as calorific as some other drinks, they often contain shocking hidden quantities of sugar, giving both orange juice (51g, 229 calories) and grape juice (42g, 175 calories) second and third place on ZAVA’s list.

Canned or bottled lemon water (that is, as opposed to just plain water served with a slice of lemon!) similarly came in fourth place overall, with an average of 21.3g of sugar and 96 calories per serving. 

5. Guinness 0.0

If you’re making the choice for an alcohol-free alcoholic drink (so to speak), then the good news is that a lot of them are not only better for you, but far healthier on a nutritional level than their regular equivalents, too.

As a result, Guinness’ 0.0 brand of alcohol-free stout might have scraped into the top 5 on ZAVA’s list, but it still only contains an average of 3g of sugar and just 71 calories. 

The remaining data uncovered by ZAVA found that some non-alcoholic drinks that might not necessarily be Christmas staples nevertheless have an even worse nutritional profile.

The unhealthiest drink found in the entire study, for instance, was a takeaway chocolate milkshake, with a staggering 102.4g of sugar and 612 calories in an average serving—more than twice that of a half-litre bottle of Coca-Cola, and enough to put the chocolate milkshake far ahead of both the first-place drinks on these lists. 

“Drinking alcohol means adding ‘empty calories’ (calories that don’t come with nutritional benefits) to your total calorie intake,” the ZAVA doctors explained in the background to the study. “These extra calories are converted to fat and stored in the body, which leads to weight gain over time.”

Ultimately, the study specifically analyzed both the calorie and sugar content of a variety of cold drinks that we might indulge in at Christmastime, based on publicly available nutritional data from a variety of sources, plus pre-existing study material from the ZAVA website itself. All the drinks namechecked in the study were then ranked based on just how unhealthy our festive favorites are. 

So if those are the unhealthy choices, then what about the healthy ones? What is a good choice if you want to enjoy a festive drink or two, while not perhaps overloading on sugar or calories? Well, additional research by ZAVA found that spirits and champagne are among the lowest-calorie choices, with a small glass of bubbly coming in at just 89 calories (compared to almost 400 in a typical 175ml glass of wine). As always with things like this, though, moderation is the key—even at Christmastime! 

You May Also Like:

Add Mental Floss as a preferred news source!