Hello everyone as promised this is a follow up post about the Simply 35 wine posted yesterday.
Some of our wonderful reddit super sleuths noticed that the calorie content they are claiming, 35cal per 5oz(standard wine pour), doesn’t make sense with the alcohol content. I dug in further last night to see if I could figure out WHY it doesn’t make sense.
Based on their [website](https://www.avintners.com/simply-35/) this wine has 35 calories per serving, yet it has 10 grams of carbohydrates per serving, and based on the alcohol content listed on the bottle of 6.5% it should also have 9.61142 grams of alcohol per serving(full calculation below). For any of our wonderful macro trackers you probably immediately see the issue, for everyone else here’s the problem:
>5oz = 147.868ml or 147.868 grams
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>147.868 gram × 0.065 alcohol content= 9.61142 grams of alcohol per serving
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>9.61142 grams of alcohol per serving × 7 calories per gram of alcohol = 67.27994 calories from alcohol per serving
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>Now we have to add the calories from the nutritional information you supplied, which would be 10 carbs per serving. A gram of carbohydrates is 4 calories. So that’s 40 calories.
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>67 cal from alcohol + 40 cal from carbohydrates = 107 calories per glass
It simply does not add up how this wine could be only 35 calories per 5oz serving right? Since we could solve this vast discrepancy I contacted the company via their website to see if I could get more information. Here is their [response](https://gyazo.com/ee3efd46d6a87b68d88de7150af4e9da), which I will also copy below for those who don’t want to check the screenshot.
>Hello
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>Thank you for your interest in our product.
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>We do not set the nutritional information for the
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>Product. Since the product is under 7 percent alcohol the FDA requires an approved lab to
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>test, analyze and provide the nutritional panel which is required to be displayed on the bottle
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>If you have questions on the wine I am more than happy to answer.
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>Thank you
Okay on this note I will say I was misinformed that this wine is not covered by the FDA. During my searching last night I missed the information that states alcoholic beverages under 7% are covered by the FDA nutritional labeling, so that’s great news! This means we can rely on the macro information listed and that for anyone who likes light beers and other lower ABV drinks you can access the information online. HOWEVER, this still doesn’t solve the problem as the numbers DO NOT LINE UP.
I responded to them again with the calculations I posted above explaining that the claimed calorie content still does not make sense. Now if it was just the discrepancy between the carbs being 40cal and the label saying 35cal, that can be explained by the [FDA allowing for a 20% margin of error](https://www.fda.gov/regulatory-information/search-fda-guidance-documents/guidance-industry-guide-developing-and-using-data-bases-nutrition-labeling) which allows products to have the calorie content posted so long as it’s within 20% of the actual content. So they chose to use that margin of error and go with 35 calories instead of the 40 calories, this may also be because [Simply40 is already another product](https://simply40.com/) and for obvious reasons they don’t want to cause confusion with their product.
However this does lead me to my final opinion on the matter, which is that this is in fact false advertising. I like to believe the best about people until I have reason to believe otherwise but there are multiple thing here that just rub me the wrong way:
1. The chose to claim a lower calorie content than they calculated. This only makes sense as a marketing decision. Even though the name Simply40 was already taken by another business, they could have still changed the name and stuck with the 40 calories calculated by the lab.
2. This is 100% marketed as a low calorie wine, combined with the fact that they are lowering their claimed calories on the label I find it hard to believe that it was simply an error to conveniently forget to include the calories from the alcohol content, after all this Moscato is actually basically the same calorie count as [other lower alcohol Moscato brands](https://www.thedrinksbusiness.com/2013/04/top-10-low-calorie-wine-brands/).
3. (And this portion of my opinion is entirely just my opinion.) The OP who posted the wine commented to another person that this wine does not taste as “rich” as other wines. Personally combined with the fact that every bottle of Simply35 is flavored and from the opinion of the person who actually drank the wine… I think this was a marketing gimmick to try and sell a product that’s probably fairly “subpar”. People expect diet/low calorie options to not necessarily live up to their “full calorie” counterparts and are going to be more willing to overlook imperfections… however if you knew that you could pick between Simply35 at 107cal per glass and say Sutter Homes Moscato (10% ABV) at 127cal per glass is that such a substantial difference for most people to take the “low calorie” option? It wouldn’t be for me personally.
4. They claimed that the nutritional labelling required is posted, but lets take a look at one of the most popular low calorie drinks on the market [BudLight](https://www.budlight.com/en/our-beers/bud-light.html?utm_medium=partner&utm_source=search&utm_campaign={campaign}&utm_content={adgroup}&utm_term=bud%20light&gclid=Cj0KCQjw-LOEBhDCARIsABrC0TmjbHAgPA0qH-qjaYhnyIp4XraghAnq2SW_fF5bFnQvSoB-8vHeqsYaAsTyEALw_wcB). A serving of Budlight is much larger at 12oz, or 355g. With 6.6g of carbs at only 26.4cal yet they still inform you that the serving of beer has 110cal… So even though they aren’t telling you that 84 calories is from alcohol they are still including it. Or how about another “low calorie” wine? Here is [FitVine Cabernet Sauvignon](https://www.fitvinewine.com/products/fitvine-wine-cabernet-sauvignon), and they too are clearly including the calories from alcohol even though they also are reporting much lower calories that mathematically possible based on their ABV (should be at minimum 130cal per glass though really more like 160cal). But they’re over the 7% labelling rule with the FDA and don’t even need to post their nutritional content at all.
So what is my take? Simply35 is a scam. They are using the marketing of being low calories to try and get people to by an otherwise mediocre wine at the same price as better tasting Moscato brands. What I have also learned is to be wary of alcoholic beverages toting themselves as low calories. Even the FitVine example, while toting a much more realistic calorie count for a glass of wine, is still marketing their wine as much lower in calories that it really is just based on their ABV. So for those of you who are wine drinkers? Just get the wine you actually like to drink and enjoy your glass to the fullest.
tl;dr Simply35 is 107cal per glass and is engaging in false advertising.
Dining and Cooking