A woman decided to conduct two separate tests to determine the impact of drinking alcohol on an empty stomach versus a full stomach, and the results were surprisingly significant.
According to scientific reasons, it turns out that we should’ve heeded our mothers’ advice about not drinking on an empty stomach.
Content creator Loryn Powell shared her experiment on her Facebook page to examine the effects of drinking on an empty versus a full stomach on blood alcohol content levels.
Powell’s experiment was divided into two phases: first, she ate a pizza, followed by ‘four shots of vodka and breathalyz[ing] every 30 minutes’.
For the second part of the experiment, she fasted for an entire day and then repeated the same process of taking four shots of vodka and checking her breath alcohol levels at regular intervals.
So, what did the experiments reveal?
After eating an entire thick-crusted pizza and consuming four shots, Powell’s blood alcohol content (BAC) measured 0.046 percent after 30 minutes.
“That’s very high,” she commented.
At the one-hour mark, her BAC was 0.044 percent, suggesting the pizza might have been absorbing some of the alcohol.
After an hour and a half, her BAC dropped to 0.036 percent, and by two hours, it further decreased to 0.024 percent. By hour three, it was down to 0.015 percent, and after four hours, it was back to zero percent.
“You’d think four shots of vodka would get me to a 0.08 percent,” Powell remarked. “And the fact that I didn’t even get past a 0.05 percent, is that like the power of pizza?”
However, the next phase of the test showed a starkly different outcome.
Drinking four shots on an empty stomach caused Powell’s BAC to reach 0.046 percent after just 30 minutes—the same initial reading as when she had eaten pizza.
Her BAC shot up to 0.084 percent after one hour, nearly doubling her initial reading.
“The pizza saved me from getting a 0.08 percent,” Powell declared, calling pizza ‘a superhero’.
She concluded: “Okay, the first 30 minutes doesn’t matter if you have food in your stomach or not. It’s what happens AFTER. Woo!”
The differences continued, with her 1.5-hour BAC reading hitting 0.89 percent on an empty stomach, compared to 0.036 percent when she had eaten.
After two hours, her BAC was 0.088 percent. At three hours, it was 0.075 percent, at four hours 0.056 percent, and at five hours 0.044 percent.
It took a full eight hours for her BAC to return to zero after not eating, which is double the time it took when she had a full stomach.