Say Bye To Your Beer Belly: Calorie Count To Be Added To Beer Labels

Beer bellies are an actual thing, and not just something you joke about with your bros and broettes. Beer is not a low-calorie beverage, and soon, you’ll know just how many calories are in that can, bottle, flight and pint.

For the time being, alcoholic beverages are not obliged to include calorie labeling. However, the Beer Institute, a commercial group comprising the biggest brewers in the country, including Heineken N.V. (ADR) HINKY, Anheuser Busch Inbev SA (ADR) BUD and SABMiller plc (ADR) SBMRY, recently announced it would start incorporating nutritional information on their bottles and cans.

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Aiming for higher transparency, the companies part of this trade group have decided to inform consumers of how many calories are in their beers, along with carbs, alcohol by volume, ingredients and other nutritional facts. It should be noted, nonetheless, that most of this info will not be included in the label, but will rather be accessible via a QR code customers can scan.

According to the Institute’s CEO James McGreevy, six of the main beer producers in the United States, which concentrate about 80 percent of the production, have already agreed on this new initiative — although implementation could take up to three years.

The chart below illustrates the number of calories present in each type and brand of beer.

On the other hand, the Brewers Association, another trade group which gathers craft brewers, warned that not all small breweries will add calorie information to their labels.

"The Brewers Association supports transparency in labeling," the association's Paul Gatza told NPR in an email. Nonetheless, "the approach the large brewers have taken may not be feasible for smaller brewers, many of whom offer dozens of small scale, seasonal products every year."

Disclosure: Javier Hasse holds no interest in any of the securities or entities mentioned above.