Women who drink alcohol need not worry about their calorie count any more since a new study claims that normal-weight women who drink light to moderate amount of alcohol tend to gain less weight, and have a lower risk of becoming obese than women who do not drink at all.
Contrary to the general belief that alcohol leads to weight gain, the US-based study, published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the publications of the Journal of the American Medical Association, found that women who did not drink alcohol at all gained the most weight, with weight gain decreasing as alcohol intake increased.
Alcohol contains about seven calories per gram and alcohol drinking is believed to cause weight gain through an imbalance of energy consumed and burned. But authors of this study say that research has not consistently provided enough evidence that consuming alcohol is a risk factor for obesity.
However, the opinion on alcohol-related benefit is divided among health experts, many of whom contest the outcomes of the study. “Although this reports talks about the benefit of alcohol on weight in women, other reports have indicated that it may cause weight gain as well. However, numerous studies have shown some effect of alcohol intake on development of diabetes and heart disease. Hence, alcohol should be avoided.Alcohol contains seven calories per gram, next to fatty foods. For proper weight loss, a good diet and exercise remain the best bets,” said Dr Anoop Misra, head of department of diabetes and metabolic diseases, Fortis Hospitals, Delhi, and a former professor of internal medicine in AIIMS.
Misra explained that the weight loss due to alcohol in the study could be due to metabolic effects of alcohol on enzymes.
Researchers studied 19,220 American women aged 39 or older who had a body mass index (BMI) in the range classified as normal (18.5 to 25).
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