The effects of alcohol on our weight are two-fold, as it affects our ability to make healthful choices. Have you ever driven to work instead of walking because of a hangover? Alcohol also affects the way in which we choose our foods, and how our bodies burns calories. Natural Mineral Water, Wheat Malt, Barley Malt, Hop Extract, Natural Flavouring, Acidifer: Lactic Acid

There are five approved artificial sweeteners: saccharin, acesulfame, aspartame, neotame, and sucralose. It is believed that these sweeteners can actually alter the way in which you taste food. These sweeteners are potent, a small amount can be perceived as far sweeter than a larger amount of standard table sugar.

Your body burns off calories from alcohol before burning calories in food. Let’s say you drink 100ml of beer, and eat 100g of stew. Your body is going to attend to breaking down the calories from the alcohol before it turns its attention to dealing with the stew. If you’re drinking regularly, your body may not be effectively burning through food calories and will store these as fat. For example, Bavaria alcohol-free wheat beer contains 3.6g of sugar. Hoegarden’s full-strength wheat beer contains just 0.1g of sugar. But the overall calorie content of Bavaria is only 27kcal, while Hoegarden’s is 58.6kcal. So you may want to think about where you are happiest to make your compromise. Are you wanting to reduce calories? Then maybe an alcohol-free beer is a better option, despite its sugar content. What alcohol-free drinks to have? Svart/Hvit from @nogneo . Treacle, coffee, roasted malts and vanilla on the nose, restrained bitterness with more roasted grains, coffee and a slight caramel sweetness as we taste. Lovely hefty body. Could easily pass for a full-fat stout free-beer.co.uk/nogne-o-svar… #alcoholfree @FreeBeer_UK - Sep 5

Eazy Peazy from @amundsenbrewery . Aroma is full on tropical - juicy mango and pineapple, citrus orange, resinous pine. Tropical fruit sweetness when we taste, with more citrus coming through and bringing in the bitterness, along with some earthy notes free-beer.co.uk/amundsen-eaz… @FreeBeer_UK - Jul 20 We all know that once you’ve had a few drinks you are far less likely to prepare a nutritious meal. You will likely end up skipping dinner or reaching for fast and convenient foods. These are likely to be higher in saturated fats and more calorie-dense. This, combined with the calories we are drinking will easily push us over our recommended calorie intake for the day.

Fructose is only partially absorbed in the small intestine, and will then travel to the large intestine. Here it will ferment. Long story short, this can lead to gastrointestinal symptoms such as bloating, gassiness, diarrhoea, and stomach pain. What about sweeteners?

Alcohol-free wine is similar to beer in that it will usually be higher in sugar, but lower in calories than its full-strength counterpart. You will find that it will likely taste sweeter, and may not give you the same balance of flavour as full-strength wine. Alcohol also helps to provide the body in wine, so without it, the drink may seem thinner. Try looking for botanical blends as an alternative, which provides some of the nuances of flavour found in some more robust wines. Find the latest alcohol research and news, tips to help you cut down, stories from people who have experienced alcohol harm and so much more. Fructose is a naturally occurring sugar found in honey, vine fruits, berries, and most root vegetables. It is an important carbohydrate, your liver converts it into glucose so your body can use it as fuel. But fructose also exists commercially and is bonded with other types of sugars. It is added to products such as fruit juice, and foods that require browning. Fructose is also the sugar used to create high-fructose corn syrup. While in its natural form it can be a good sugar, too much of it can cause other issues. Launched in 1978, Bavaria 0.0% has spread far and wide since then, and is on sale in most major UK supermarkets. Its creators claim it was “the first zero alcohol beer in the world”. It’s brewed alcohol-free, rather than having the alcohol removed at the end. The aim, they say, is to give the drinker “the great taste of an independent, family-brewed beer”. The first thing to say about Bavaria beer is that it’s not from Bavaria. It seems that the Swinkels family, who’ve been brewing in the Netherlands since 1719 took their inspiration, and the name of their beer, from the master brewers of southern Germany. You may also remember the Bavaria brewery as the people who staged a very orange marketing ambush at the 2010 football World Cup, much to the annoyance of FIFA and the tournament’s sponsor, Budweiser.Cheers Mind pale ale from @fierceandnoble . Bready malts, peppery spice and grapefruit citrus on the nose. Bitterness when we taste, grapefruit citrus and earthy pine, this carries on through the drink. Some tropical and stone fruit manages to peek through free-beer.co.uk/fierce-noble… @FreeBeer_UK - Aug 11

The enzyme Aldh1a1 is responsible for converting alcohol to fat, and this fat builds up around your essential organs. This effect of this enzyme is suppressed by oestrogen. You may notice that men tend to gain a ‘beer belly’ at any age as their oestrogen levels are low, whereas women may feel that fat piles on faster around the waist as they go through menopause and oestrogen levels dip. What about sugar? Royal Swinkels Family Brewers do know a thing or two about brewing. They’ve been at their game since at least 1773, and have been owned and run by the Swinkels family for more than seven generations. In their home country of Holland they are second only to beer behemoth Heineken for sales and beer output, and they also are large producers of malt, milling and toasting nearly half a million tonnes per year, with about one third of which is used in their own brews. Despite offering a range of full alcohol beers, Swinkels’ only wheat beer is their Bavaria 0.0% Wit, which I find strange for a company whose home country is celebrated for the style. Alcohol-free wheat beers tend to work well and provide most if not all of the flavours and aromas that a standard full-fat wit will supply. We’ve had very few low scoring nolo wheat beers here, but Bavaria’s Original still gives me (and my teeth) nightmares of cloying maltiness, and is perhaps already clouding my judgement of 0.0% Wit. Will we get a nice hit of banana esters, spicy cloves and creamy wheat? Or will we have another soft drink to throw on the pile? Let’s pop the top of this bottle and get it in a glass. That Bavaria is made in, erm, Holland is the least of it. Family owners the Swinkels may have been brewing for 300 years, and they may have patented their own alcohol-free fermenting process, but they have failed to nail palatable no-alcohol beer. Bavaria 0.0% is spectacularly unpleasant. The aroma is stewed vegetables and the flavour is all syrupy sweetness and hot, wet grains with just a fizzle of hop bitterness at its edges. Imagine the most juvenile, mass-produced, malty US lager, but worse. I would happily pay hard cash never to drink this again. It’s easy to think that alcohol harm is inevitable. It isn’t. This report looks at alcohol in the UK today, and makes the case for key changes we must all work towards if we are to end serious alcohol harm. If your dad made homebrew in the 1980s, you will be familiar with Cobra Zero’s appalling smell: yeasty and malty, like sodden breakfast cereals and mouldy fruit bread. Little in drinking history, however, could prepare you for the taste. It is as if someone started to make beer, got bored and decided to bottle unfermented wort (the hot, sugary liquid that is the basis of beer) straight from the mash tun. It is all musty, malty sweetness and peculiar fruit flavours. Hops tinkle in the distance, as ineffectual as a wind chime. Awful.You might assume that the “radler” concept is a marketing wheeze, but no, mixing beer with fruit juice is a very much a thing in Germany. This is veritable Um Bongo concoction, which mixes lemon, orange, lime and cherry-like acerola juice with alcohol-free beer and carbonated water. You would happily chug it down on a hot summer’s day, but it tastes like fizzy pop, not beer. You cannot taste beer to any discernible degree, which, given the beer in question is Foster’s, is a considerable bonus. Look for drinks that contain natural sugars. Kombucha is a great alternative to your big-brand sodas, as they are mostly made using cane sugar, and rarely contain added sugars and E numbers. Kombuchas that are flavoured with fruit are likely to contain more sugar, while those that focus only on the tea are likely to have lower sugar content. You may experience cravings for sweet things when you stop drinking alcohol. This is because alcohol gives you a dopamine hit and affects your brain chemistry. Sugar can have a similar effect on your energy, elevating your mood; think about the dreaded sugar high that kids get after too many sweets. When your brain is crying out for the buzz that alcohol gives you, the logical alternative may be to reach for something sweet instead.