(TimesLive) - What type of alcoholic drink has the most calories in it?

According to Drinkaware, a pint of lager is often only as calorific as a slice of pizza, which would mean wading through a lot of liquid before you got to the equivalent of a full wheel. But let's consider wine, which mostly has a higher ABV (alcohol by volume) than beer.

Alcohol itself is pretty calorie-dense, containing seven calories a gram, compared with the pathetic four calories a gram in protein and fat.

When it comes to wine, there are calories in the alcohol and calories in any sugar that might be added or left over after fermentation. Therefore, wine made from red grapes that have basked all summer under a hot sun, so the level of sugar in the grapes rises and rises, and are picked with a potential ABV of 15% or 16%, is going to be more calorific than a fresh, dry white from a chilly part of the world.

Champagne typically contains 8g of sugar a litre, 12g at the most, which amounts to a gram or so in a glass, marginally less in "skinny" bubbly. You'll almost burn off the extra calories in regular champagne lifting the bottle for a refill.

New York doctor Charles Lieber found that while social drinkers consuming one (women) or two (men) glasses a day fully process and absorb the 7.1 kcal/g in the alcohol they ingest, chronic alcohol abusers metabolise their food and drink intake differently. Conducting experiments on alcoholics, Lieber found that when carbohydrates were substituted with ethanol, drinkers consuming an otherwise balanced diet lost weight.

Despite the evidence that liquid lunches can be slimming, I do not recommend that those trying to lose weight try the high-fat, high-booze diet - liver damage is a high price to pay for the pleasure of eating a lot of butter and drinking a lot of wine while remaining relatively slim.