While no alcohol is inherently "healthy," you can make healthier choices by picking lower-calorie, lower-sugar options like light beer, dry wine/champagne, spirits mixed with soda water (vodka soda, gin & tonic), hard seltzers, or hard kombucha, and by adding fresh fruit or spices for flavor instead of sugary mixers, always remembering to drink in moderation. Red wine offers antioxidants, while hard kombucha provides probiotics, but the key is minimizing sugar, calories, and additives.
The "healthiest" alcohol options focus on low sugar, fewer additives, and potential antioxidants, with red wine often topping lists for its polyphenols (like resveratrol), though moderation is key. Other good choices include clear spirits (vodka, gin, tequila) mixed with water or soda water (not tonic) to keep sugar and calories low, and drinks with vegetable bases like a Bloody Mary, or lower-sugar options like hard seltzers, light beers, or dry wines.
Take a look at this list of the least-damaging alcoholic drinks from Legends at White Oak to help you drink consciously.
For weight loss, the best alcohol choices are low-calorie, low-sugar options like spirits (vodka, gin, whiskey) mixed with soda water/diet mixers, light beer, hard seltzers, or dry wines/champagne, focusing on minimal sugar and avoiding creamy, sugary cocktails which add significant calories. Pure spirits (vodka, tequila, gin, whiskey) have about 100 calories per 1.5 oz serving with zero carbs, making them great choices, especially when drunk neat or on the rocks.
Drink water, tea, or coffee (with little or no sugar). Limit milk/dairy (1-2 servings/day) and juice (1 small glass/day). Avoid sugary drinks. The more veggies — and the greater the variety — the better.
Soda is invariably the worst and extremely unhealthy drink that you would ever consume. Both regular and diet sodas are considered unhealthy.
Vodka Soda
Sipping on a strong liquor-based drink like vodka can be great for weight loss because the more substantial the liquor, the less likely you are to gulp it down. That means one drink goes a long way, lowering calorie intake.
The 1-2-3 drinking rule is a guideline for moderation: 1 drink per hour, no more than 2 drinks per occasion, and at least 3 alcohol-free days each week, helping to pace consumption and stay within safer limits. It emphasizes pacing alcohol intake with water and food, knowing standard drink sizes (12oz beer, 5oz wine, 1.5oz spirits), and avoiding daily drinking to reduce health risks, though some health guidance suggests even lower limits.
Which alcohol is lowest in calories?
However, if you are going to drink, having red wine in moderation is a healthier choice than other alcoholic drinks. This is due to its high levels of antioxidants called polyphenols, which have been linked to better heart and gut health.
Which is healthier, vodka or gin? From a caloric standpoint, both drinks are similar, with around 97 calories per 44 ml (standard serving). However, gin may offer additional benefits thanks to antioxidants found in its botanicals, such as juniper.
The alcoholic drinks with the least sugar are straight spirits like vodka, gin, whiskey, and tequila, as distillation removes sugar, followed by dry wines (red/white), dry sparkling wines, and hard seltzers, but always watch out for sugary mixers like juice or soda, opting for club soda or diet mixers instead.
Red wine, in limited amounts, has long been thought of as healthy for the heart. The alcohol and certain substances in red wine called antioxidants may help prevent coronary artery disease, the condition that leads to heart attacks.
Mixers to Make your Alcohol Healthy
Usually this is based on behaviour over the last 12 months or more, but alcohol dependence could be diagnosed based on continuous (daily or almost daily) for at least one month.
If you do experience early symptoms of ARLD, these are often quite vague, such as:
Two fingers means a single pour. Three fingers means a double pour. Served neat in a rocks glass. It's old school.
Sugary cocktails like espresso martinis, Sangria, and Pimm's contain over 70% of your daily sugar intake in one serving! Sugary drinks can lead to weight gain especially around the abdominal area, hindering your weight loss progress. The average cocktail mentioned above is roughly 300 calories – crazy, right!?
The "20-minute rule for alcohol" is a simple strategy to moderate drinking: wait 20 minutes after finishing one alcoholic drink before starting the next, giving you time to rehydrate with water and reassess if you truly want another, often reducing cravings and overall intake. It helps slow consumption, break the chain of continuous drinking, and allows the body a natural break, making it easier to decide if you've had enough or switch to a non-alcoholic option.
Considered one of the most dangerous – and unhealthy – drinks, a Long Island iced tea doesn't actually contain any iced tea. Instead, it's a combination of vodka, gin, rum, tequila and triple sec, topped with sour mix and soda. All together, that means one Long Island contains as many as 780 calories.
The major causes of alcohol-related death are alcohol poisoning, cancer, car accidents, heart failure, liver damage, and violence.
Instantly. Sparkling Water: Liquid Death Sparkling Water doesn't just look like a beer, it is actually carbonated like a beer. Slightly less carbonation means less carbonic acid is formed, which means it's less bitter and more thirst murderous than many other sparkling waters.