Whichever way you cut it, water and fruit juices are always going to be better for your body than vodka, wine and beer. Of all the nights of the year, however, New Year’s Eve is one where even the most moderate drinkers often throw caution to the wind, book a cab and decide to have a few – or more than a few.

Fair enough. If there is ever a night for getting a little squiffy it’s this one. And if you pick your drinks wisely, nutritionally it doesn’t have to be all bad news.

Generally, it is wise to remember that alcohol in small amounts is a stimulant, but in larger quantities, is a potent depressant. This “biphasic” action means that one or two drinks help to make you feel jolly and chatty, but a few more can end up leaving you a bit down. This is not good news if this happens as the chimes strike midnight and your bonhomie evaporates on the spot. So pace yourself. It is also important for women to be realistic about their capacity.

Alcohol is less diluted in our systems compared with men (because we have more body fat and less body water), and so it is physiologically impossible for us to keep up with the boys. Men can clear just under a unit of alcohol per hour, we clear significantly less. So no drinking competitions.

It pays to know your units. A “unit” is a 25ml, 40 per cent ABV (alcohol by volume) shot of spirits; a half a pint of 3 to 5 per cent ABV beers, or 125ml glass of 8 per cent ABV wine.

Remember that a standard bar-sized glass of wine tends these days to be 175ml and most wine is around 12 to 14 per cent ABV, which means that one glass of wine can easily be 2.1 units.

If you want vaguely to keep track of your units you are probably better off sticking with standard shots of spirits and half pints of beer or lager (not premium ones, which are 1.5 units per small bottle). Champagne is probably a better choice than wine if only because champagne glasses still tend to be 125ml.

If opting for spirits, vodka is the least likely to leave you with a raging hangover because it contains fewer complex compounds compared with whisky and rum, which are associated with hangovers. Take it with diet mixers (but not diet cola, which will give you lots of caffeine and make it hard to sleep once you hit the sack) to keep the calories down, or fruit juice, which has the advantage of giving you vitamin C to help your liver deal better with alcohol. There is no point in kidding yourself that Guinness is good for iron: it is not. Half a pint has 0.2mg, which means that a man would need to drink 10 pints to get a quarter of his daily requirements of this mineral.

That said, it has 86 calories per half pint compared with 91 in draught beer, although the latter has the advantage of giving you lots of silica, which is good for your bones and skin and may lighten your hangover if you can remember this fact when you finally rouse yourself on January 1.

As for wine, calorie-wise there is little to choose between red with 85 calories to a 125ml glass and dry white with 83 calories. Red wine does have more heart-friendly antioxidants, but any benefit these may give tend to come from having a small regular glass throughout the year rather than downing a bottle of Merlot on December 31.

Clearly, diluting white wine with sparkling water to make a spritzer will halve your alcohol per glass and still allow you join in the fun. If you want to seriously combine fun with calorie counting then stick to Laurent Perrier Ultra Brut champagne.

Not only do you get the advantage of limiting yourself to 125ml glasses, but it has just 60 calories a glass compared with 95 in most other champagne. You could make it into a buck’s fizz with orange juice, but this seems like sacrilege. Sipping more slowly is a better option and the best advice when it comes to New Year’s Eve drinking I can think of – whatever is in your glass. Cheers!

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