Hello, this is Monica Reinagel, and you're listening to the nutrition divas, quick and dirty tips for eating well and feeling fabulous. Welcome. We hear an awful lot from nutrition experts about limiting

our intake of added sugars. I know you've heard a lot about it from me. And to your credit,

our added sugar consumption has ever so slowly begun to decline.

But there's another very common source of empty calories in our diets that doesn't receive nearly as much attention.

And the average number of calories that we're taking in from this other overlooked source

has more than doubled over the last 20 years.

So what is this stealthy source of calories

in the American diet?

Alcohol. In 1991. in the American diet, alcohol.

In 1991, Americans were consuming about 300 calories per week per person in the form of beer,

wine, liquor, or mixed drinks.

By 2012, it was more than 700 calories per week per person.

But perhaps per capita consumption figures aren't the best way to look at it

because then those calories are being averaged across the entire adult population

and that includes of course lots of people who don't drink at all.

Although the percentage of adults that

drink alcohol has increased slightly, the numbers also show that those who drink

are drinking more and they're drinking more frequently than they used to.

The proportion of adults who have a drink on any given day

has doubled from 1 in 8 to 1 in 4.

And drinkers now take an average of 3,000 calories per week in 2012 up from just

over 2,000 calories per week two decades ago. That means for regular drinkers

...