From the point of view of expense alone, to take alcohol for food is like killing buffalos for their tongues and letting the rest of the carcass go to waste, as the Indians and pioneer hunters of the plains used to do.

It never has more than a fraction of the food value of the grain or fruit out of which it was made; and the amount of nutriment that it contains costs ten times as much as it would in any of the staple foods.
Moreover, when it is taken with an ordinary supply of food, it is found that, for every ounce of alcohol burned in the body, a similar amount of the other food is prevented from being consumed, and probably goes to waste, owing to the harmful effects of alcohol upon digestion.
Therefore, to talk of alcohol as a food is really absurd.
The Effect of Alcohol on Digestion.

It has been urged by some that alcohol increases the appetite, and enables one to digest larger amounts of food.

The early experiments seemed to support this claim by showing that alcohol, well diluted, and in moderate amounts, increased appetite and the flow of the gastric juice.

When the experiments were carried a little further, however, it was clearly shown that its presence in the stomach and intestines, in such amounts as would result from a glass of beer, or one or two glasses of claret-wine with a meal, interfered with the later stages of digestion, so that the later harmful effects overbalanced any earlier good effects.
Its Effect on the Temperature of the Body.