Is the Big-Gulp Wine Trend Making You Fat?

These days corn-syrup-sweetened soft drinks are targeted as villainous causes of obesity. Artificial sweeteners are busted as bogus substitutes. And now the big-gulp generation is graduating to wine time.

Americans Are Drinking More

According to the Wine Institute, Americans are drinking more wine than ever, exceeding even the French. Figures from 2014 show U.S. wine consumption nearly doubled in 20 years, up to 895 million total gallons in 2014 from 459 million in 1994, with a steady increase each year. Findings released in April, 2015, by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation found that “heavy drinking” (more than one drink per day for women and more than two for men) among Americans rose 17.2 percent between 2005 and 2012, with the sharpest increase among women.

You love your wine, I know. I love mine. But is your serene evening unwinding routine, that shared bottle of wine with your beloved or those subtly enlarging glasses of Chardonnay, becoming an insidious slow climb, silently widening your waistline?

Liquid Calories Are Slippery

Liquid calories are just plain slippery. A meal of steak or rice and beans settles down satisfyingly in the stomach. Even hearty salads, like a Caesar or Cobb, knock a filling home run, leaving us feeling satiated. But it’s all too easy to swallow the notion that what is not food is not really caloric. When it comes to wine, tipping the scales can happen fast.


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