While sipping vodka sodas at a downtown bar in New York’s East Village roughly a year ago, a friend told me he prefers the beverage because it had “no calories.”

That’s wrong. Vodka, distilled from grains or potatoes, always contains calories. And making matters worse is the fact that the beverage my friend was drinking was a vanilla vodka, leading me to the next unpalatable fact: Flavored spirits pack even more calories than their unflavored sibling brands.

Diageo, the world’s largest liquor company, has led the charge to change misconceptions about what exactly can be found in alcoholic beverages.

Look at the label of an alcoholic beverage sold on liquor shelves today and you’ll see information about the beverage you are consuming is fairly limited. The U.S. Treasury’s Alcohol Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) allows labels to announce the classification of the beverage (gin, vodka, etc.), as well as the alcohol content, the brand name and a health warning statement. There isn’t much more information beyond that, and certainly no details about what’s in the liquid.