OK, I don't really need this justification. So go ahead and shoot me down or enable me, as you prefer. I'm trying to get a handle on usable caloric density of a good tasting booze. By that I don't mean Everclear but, say, a decent whisky at 40% ethanol.
I found an old NYT article (citing real research that I did not read) talking about why alcoholics consuming 2000 kcal of ethanol / day actually loose rather than gain weight. That kind of consumption interferes with normal catabolism and basically tasks your metabolism with cleaning up the fallout. I didn't immediately find anything on utilization of more modest amounts of ethanol. Maybe there is real research on this?
In any case, wiki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_energy) has energy density of ethanol at 6.9 kcal/g. That would put my whisky at 2.76 kcal/g (counting only ethanol) which is essentially the same value provided by nutritional labels: 76 kcal/28g = 2.71 kcal/g.
Well, that's not as good as peanut butter (5.9 kcal/g) but it's right in there with strawberry jam (2.8 kcal/g)!
