The average 12-ounce beer has 153 calories, slightly more than a can of Coca-Cola. But the typical beer drinker probably doesn’t know that, because regulators have long exempted alcohol producers from stamping their products with the kinds of nutritional labels that are required on other beverages and on food.

Recently, the country’s biggest beer companies, including Anheuser-Busch, MillerCoors and Heineken, announced that they would soon begin putting calorie, alcohol content and other information on bottles and cans. This is a good step, but it’s not sufficient. Unless all alcohol companies start labeling their products under the current voluntary standards, federal regulators ought to require it.

With obesity a national health problem, health experts have been particularly concerned about the consumption of “empty calories” from alcohol, soft drinks and other foods that contain few or no essential nutrients. About one-third of men and 18 percent of women drink alcohol on any given day, and those drinks account for about 16 percent of the calories they consume, according to a 2012 report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Labeling alcohol products would help consumers make better choices. Studies like one published in the American Journal of Public Health in 2010 have found that calorie counts on menus influence people to pick healthier options. Labels on alcoholic drinks could have the added benefit of encouraging people to drink less and thus help reduce drunken driving and other dangerous behaviors.