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Gin and tonic

A 190 ml serving of gin and tonic carries about 11.8 g of pure ethanol — 1.5 UK units, 0.8 US standard drinks, 1.0 Estonian/Finnish units — and roughly 136 kcal.

Never use this page to decide whether to drive. Clearance is an estimate from a simplified model and varies with your liver, your genetics, your medicines, food, sleep and illness — real elimination rates differ between people by a factor of two, and the model does not know which end you are at. The only safe level of alcohol for driving is none, and a legal limit is not a safety threshold. If you have been drinking, do not drive.

Mixed drinks40 ml at 37.5%USDA basis: Tonic water

A gin and tonic is the clearest example of a composed drink, and the page treats it as one: the ethanol comes from the measured gin pour, and the carbohydrate comes from the tonic. EU rules set a minimum of 37.5% ABV for gin, so a 40 ml pour has a known ethanol content regardless of brand.

Tonic water is not a neutral mixer. It is a sugared soft drink — the USDA reference row shows roughly nine grams of carbohydrate per hundred millilitres, essentially all of it sugar — and a generous pour of tonic can carry more carbohydrate energy than a glass of wine does. Switching to a slimline tonic removes that entirely while leaving the alcohol untouched, which is the single largest calorie lever available on any drink on this page.

The proportions are also unusually variable. A bar gin and tonic might be 40 ml of gin in 150 ml of tonic; a home version might be double the gin in the same glass. Because the spirit and the mixer are physically separate until the moment of pouring, this is one drink where you genuinely control both halves — and where a habit of pouring by eye compounds fast across an evening.

By serving size

Where the calories come from

The carbohydrate figure below is the USDA FoodData Central row for Tonic water — 8.8 g of carbohydrate (of which 8.8 g sugars) per 100 g — applied to 150 ml of this serving. USDA values are per 100 grams and this page applies them per 100 millilitres. Beer, wine and cider are close enough to the density of water for that to cost a per cent or two; spirits are lighter, so for them the approximation is worth about five per cent.

The carbohydrate figure is the USDA row for tonic water, applied to the mixer volume only. The gin contributes ethanol and no carbohydrate.

There is no whole-drink cross-check available here, because the reference row covers the mixer only. The ethanol half of the table is exact arithmetic from the spirit pour; the carbohydrate half is the reference row for the mixer. A published total for the finished drink does not exist in this database, and the page will not invent one.

Source: USDA FoodData Central SR Legacy (public domain) — row: Tonic water · checked 2026-09-02

What it costs in walking

This is an energy comparison and nothing more. Walking does not undo a drink: the ethanol still has to be metabolised, it is still prioritised over other fuels while it is in the system, and the effect it has on sleep that night is not cancelled by exercise the following morning. The number is here because it makes an abstract quantity concrete, not because it is a plan.

See brisk walking for where the MET value comes from, or the whole exercise library for other movements.

Source: 2011 Compendium of Physical Activities (Ainsworth et al.) — MET value for brisk walking · checked 2026-09-02

How many reach a weekly guideline

The 112 g line is the UK Chief Medical Officers' 14 units a week, quoted here because it is the guideline most often referenced in English. It is not the only one and it is not necessarily the one that applies to you: national low-risk guidance differs between countries, is written in different unit sizes, and has been revised downward in several places in recent years. Look up the guideline where you live and convert it with the table above.

Source: UK Chief Medical Officers' low risk drinking guidelines — named example only · checked 2026-09-02

Clearance estimate

Read those hours as the earliest plausible figure under a set of assumptions that will not all hold for you. Absorption is treated as instantaneous, so the model starts the clock too early. Elimination is treated as a fixed 0.15 ‰ an hour, when published individual rates run from roughly 0.10 to 0.20 — at the slow end, the last column takes a third longer than it says. And the whole calculation is for one dose taken at one moment, not for three drinks spread across an evening, which is the situation that actually produces a morning-after problem.

Never use this page to decide whether to drive. Clearance is an estimate from a simplified model and varies with your liver, your genetics, your medicines, food, sleep and illness — real elimination rates differ between people by a factor of two, and the model does not know which end you are at. The only safe level of alcohol for driving is none, and a legal limit is not a safety threshold. If you have been drinking, do not drive.

The thing people get wrong

The tonic. Full-sugar tonic can add as much energy as the gin does.

Frequently asked questions

Other drinks

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