A woman conducted two tests to find out the difference drinking on a full versus empty stomach really makes and the results are ‘actually wild’.
Turns out there’s actually a scientific reason we should’ve been listening to our moms when they warned us to never go out on an empty stomach.
Content creator Loryn Powell took to her Facebook page to reveal her experiment for testing whether or not drinking on an empty stomach versus a full stomach actually impacts your blood alcohol content.
Breaking the experiment down into two parts, Powell begins by eating a pizza and then taking ‘four shots of vodka and breathalyz[ing] every 30 minutes’.
For the empty stomach test, she explains she’ll not eat ‘anything all day’ the following day and then copy the same instructions, shotting four vodkas and breathalyzing regularly.
But what did the tests show?
After eating a whole thick-crusted pizza and downing four shots as if she’s back on a spring break vacation again, Powell reveals her blood alcohol content measures 0.046 percent after the first 30 minutes.
“That’s very high,” she adds.
After an hour, the breathalyzer test revealed a score of 0.044 percent – perhaps some of the pizza dough was doing its best to soak up the vodka?
An hour-and-a-half sees the blood alcohol content go down to 0.036 percent and by two hours it’s down to 0.024 percent, dropping even further to a barely there 0.015 percent in the third hour and by hour four, Powell was back to normal at zero percent.
“You’d think four shots of vodka would get me to a 0.08 percent,” she said. “And the fact that I didn’t even get past a 0.05 percent, is that like the power of pizza?”
Well, the next test took a more than slightly different turn.
Drinking four shots on a completely empty stomach saw Powell’s breathalyzer test reach 0.046 percent after 30 minutes – matching the same reading she first took after eating pizza.
The second reading after an hour measured a whopping 0.084 percent – nearly double the initial reading.
“The pizza saved me from getting a 0.08 percent,” Powell said, declaring pizza ‘a super hero’.
She resolved: “Okay the first 30 minutes doesn’t matter if you have food in your stomach or not. It’s what happens AFTER. Woo!”
And the stark contrast didn’t end there either, with shots on an empty stomach seeing the 1.5 hour breathalyzer reading come out as 0.89 percent opposed to the. 0.036 percent when Powell drank on a full stomach.
After two hours, Powell’s levels were at 0.088 percent, by three 0.075 percent, by four 0.056 percent and by five 0.044 percent.
It was only after eight hours that she’d reached zero again – drinking on an empty stomach taking a whopping double the amount of time to sober up from compared to on a full stomach.