Turns out our mom’s warnings weren’t just parental paranoia but based on actual science
A woman conducted two tests to find out the real difference between drinking on a full stomach versus an empty one, and the results were “actually wild.”
It turns out there’s a scientific reason behind all those warnings from our moms about not drinking on an empty stomach.
Content creator Loryn Powell took to her Facebook page to share her experiment, testing whether drinking on a full stomach compared to an empty one really impacts your blood alcohol content (BAC).
She split her experiment into two parts.
First, she ate an entire pizza before taking “four shots of vodka and breathalyz[ing] every 30 minutes.”
For the second part, she planned to not eat “anything all day” and follow the same steps the next day, taking four vodka shots and using a breathalyzer at regular intervals.
Your mom was rightGetty Stock Images/ Iulia Bondar
So, what did the tests reveal?
After eating a thick-crust pizza and downing four shots like she was on spring break, Powell’s BAC measured 0.046 percent after the first 30 minutes.
“That’s very high,” she commented. An hour later, her breathalyzer showed 0.044 percent—perhaps the pizza dough was working its magic by soaking up some of the alcohol.
After 90 minutes, her BAC dropped to 0.036 percent. At two hours, it went down further to 0.024 percent, and by hour three, it was at a low 0.015 percent.
By the fourth hour, Powell’s BAC had returned to zero.
“You’d think four shots of vodka would get me to a 0.08 percent,” she remarked.
“And the fact that I didn’t even get past a 0.05 percent, is that like the power of pizza?”
The second test, on an empty stomach, took a much different turn.
After taking four shots on an empty stomach, her BAC also hit 0.046 percent in the first 30 minutes—identical to the result after eating pizza.
But things escalated quickly. After an hour, her BAC shot up to 0.084 percent—nearly double what it was after eating pizza.
“The pizza saved me from getting a 0.08 percent,” Powell said, even calling pizza “a superhero.”
She realized, “Okay, the first 30 minutes don’t matter if you have food in your stomach or not. It’s what happens AFTER. Woo!”
The differences didn’t stop there. After 90 minutes of drinking on an empty stomach, her BAC was a staggering 0.089 percent, compared to just 0.036 percent after eating.
Two hours in, her BAC remained high at 0.088 percent. By three hours, it was 0.075 percent.
At four hours, she was at 0.056 percent, and by hour five, it was still 0.044 percent.
It took a full eight hours for her BAC to finally return to zero when drinking on an empty stomach, which was twice as long as it took when she drank on a full stomach.