How DrinkLeader Gets Its Data
Live figures: 3,442 drinks across 21 categories, 467 individually verified against a producer source.
Where the numbers come from
Every drink lists three measured facts: calories, carbohydrates (g) and alcohol by volume (ABV %), all for the serving size shown on its page. The bulk of the catalog was compiled from product labels and public product databases (including Open Food Facts) and then cleaned. That is fast but imperfect: labels change, databases contain user-entered mistakes, and a few entries mix per-100 ml and per-serving numbers.
What "verified" means
A drink marked Verified nutrition has had its calories, carbs and ABV checked against a primary source - the producer's own nutrition page or label, a government food database entry (such as USDA FoodData Central), or the matching Open Food Facts label record. The page names the source, links to it, and shows the date we checked. We do not mark a drink verified based on calorie-counting apps or aggregator sites, and we never estimate a number to fill a gap.
Drinks without that badge say "Label-based figures" instead. They are usually right, but we have not yet confirmed them one by one, and we are working through the catalog starting with the products people look up most.
Serving sizes
Nutrition is shown for the serving the label uses (for example 12 fl oz for a can of beer, 1.5 fl oz for a shot of spirits, 5 fl oz for wine). To compare drinks fairly across categories, the rankings and the "same serving size" compare view rescale each drink to a standard serving for its category - the most common serving size among drinks of that type in the catalog. The numbers on a drink's own page are always the unmodified label values.
How the DrinkLeader score works (0-100)
The score rewards drinks where more of the calories come from alcohol than from sugar and carbs:
- Alcoholic drinks (over 0.5% ABV): start from the share of the drink's calories that come from alcohol (ethanol is about 7 calories per gram), capped at 90. Subtract 1 point per gram of carbohydrate. Add up to 10 points for high ABV in small servings.
- Non-alcoholic drinks (0.5% ABV or less): there is no alcohol to reward, so lighter is better: 100 minus half a point per calorie and 0.8 points per gram of carbs.
A high score means "efficient and low-carb", not "healthy". Alcohol carries health risks at any level, and the score says nothing about how much you should drink. Standard-drink counts on My List use the US definition of 14 grams of pure alcohol.
Corrections
Found a number that does not match the package in your hand? Use the "Spot a wrong number? Report it" form on any drink page (with the label figures if you can) and we will check it and update the page. When a producer reformulates a product, we update the figures and the verification date.
Images
Product photos are gathered from producer and retailer pages and each one is reviewed to confirm it shows the right product and variant before it is published. Where we cannot find a correct photo we show a letter placeholder rather than a wrong image.