Long Island ice tea, also known as LIIT, is a popular mixed alcoholic beverage containing vodka, triple sec, tequila, rum, gin, cola and sweet and sour mix. There are a lot of ingredients involved, and so the number of calories in a single LIIT is actually quite high.
When it comes to calorie-dense drinks, it is hard to beat the calories in a LIIT. For every 8.3 ounces of Long Island ice tea you drink, you will get about 276 calories, according to the USDA FoodData Central listing for Long Island iced tea calories.
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This should account for roughly 14% of your daily calories, assuming you consume 2,000 calories every day. For example, if you wanted to get 276 calories from regular cola, you would have to consume about 22 ounces of the drink. That's nearly 3 times as much as a single Long Island ice tea, to get the same amount of calories.
Carbohydrate Content
Not only are Long Island iced tea's calories high, but most of those calories come from carbohydrates. For every 8.3 ounces of Long Island ice tea you drink, you will be consuming about 33 grams of carbohydrates. This is according to the nutrition information for Long Island ice tea at USDA FoodData Central.
This is a significant amount of carbohydrates in Long Island iced tea. You get twice as many carbohydrates from 8.3 ounces of Long Island ice tea as you get from a slice of bread. If you're trying to diet by limiting the number of carbohydrates you eat, then you should avoid Long Island ice tea.
The reason the carbohydrates in Long Island ice tea are so plentiful is that there are lots of ingredients in the drink sweetened with sugar. All of the carbohydrates in Long Island ice tea come from sugar.
Long Island ice tea is an alcoholic beverage and, as you may know, alcohol itself is a nutrient that contains many calories. There are at least 7 calories in every gram of alcohol that you consume, according to the NHS. For the sake of comparison, if you were to consume pure fat, you would ingest 9 calories for every gram of fat you consumed. Every gram of alcohol has just 2 fewer calories than a literal gram of fat.
A serving of 8.3 ounces of Long Island ice tea will provide you with 20.5 grams of alcohol, which means you will be getting 144 calories from the alcohol in Long Island ice tea alone. That's about 52 percent of the total Long Island iced tea calories. While carbohydrate levels in Long Island iced tea are high, you won't get much of the other important nutrients.
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You won't get any dietary fat in Long Island tea. Dietary fat is an important nutrient, according to the Cleveland Clinic. Fat provides energy, as well as being the best pathway for your body to absorb certain vitamins.
You also won't get much protein in Long Island ice tea (0.022 grams per drink, according to USDA). Protein is yet another important nutrient that your body needs, in order to repair cells and create new ones, according to MedLinePlus.