Mixing alcohol with diet sodas can help reduce your caloric intake by a little, and your good-tasting-liquids intake by a lot. But did you know that it might also get you drunk faster?
According to a new study led by Cecile Marczinski, the stuff you choose to mix your booze with can modulate how much it affects your blood alcohol level (BAC). Apparently, the sugar in regular juice and soda slows down the absorption of alcohol into your bloodstream, while the alien chemicals that make diet drinks taste sort of sweet (but not in a good way) do not. Drinking it straight up is much the same as drinking it with diet mixers, but with the key difference that it may stimulate the growth of hair on your chest. The more you know!
The study’s author said sugar vs. diet could theoretically make enough of a difference to put you over or under the legal limit, depending.
Via NPR:
Marczinski’s study found that the average BrAC was .091 (at its peak) when subjects drank alcohol mixed with a diet drink. By comparison, BrAC was .077 when the same subjects consumed the same amount of alcohol but with a sugary soda.
“I was a little surprised by the findings, since the 18% increase in BrAC was a fairly large difference,” Marczinski tells The Salt via email.
Additionally, the diet soda drinking subjects couldn’t tell they were more fucked up than the non-diet-drinkers, because drunk people are not very perceptive.
As someone who can’t stomach straight up alcohol or diet soda, and who seems to metabolize alcohol at the rate of a twelve-year-old, I am actually somewhat happy about this information. Maybe next time I go out I’ll have two drinks instead of one, and then challenge my dieting friends to a “saying the alphabet backwards” contest! But for tiny, glamorous Lindsay Lohan types already inclined towards drinking all of their calories in booze form, I imagine this will only sweeten the deal regarding their mixers of choice. Metaphorically speaking.
(Via Think Progress)
Photo of Coco: WENN
