It’s been said that Sam Adams founder, Jim Koch, has a sneaky trick to avoid getting drunk after a long day of beer tasting – he swallows active dry yeast mixed with yogurt. The idea being the yeast in his stomach digests the alcohol before it can get into his bloodstream. There’s some science backing this up, but does it work in practice? To find out we’ve assembled a tasting panel of beer, whiskey, wine drinkers. We’re going to chow down on dry yeast, partake in some beverages, and monitor our blood alcohol levels to see if the yeast will preserve our sobriety.
7 thoughts on “The Brülosophy Show: Does Eating Yeast Prevent You From Getting Drunk? | BRÜlieve It Or Not”
Fun video. Not sure if it confirmed or falsified a hypothesis, but it was fun.
Here’s a link to a public radio “experiment” a few years back: https://www.cpr.org/2014/07/10/alcohol-test-does-eating-yeast-keep-you-from-getting-drunk/
In med school, we ran a poker night experiment on ourselves. (I think the statute of limitations has well passed by now.) Our endpoint was hangover or not. There were six of us drinking beer pretty much all night. We started IVs on three of us at the start (med students are crazy) and ran saline drips all night. We did not control the pizza slices or cheese nachos however. The three of us on IVs were not hungover the next day. I was in the IV group and felt fine. The three controls looked and felt terrible. I don’t know about eating bread yeast, but lots of fluid helps.
Now, time to do the exact same thing without yeast so you will have a control group! 😛
Actually it may not be a bad idea. At least until the breathalyzer starts going higher than 0.03/0.04 so you can confirm it is not broken.
This was fun to watch! The idea, however, is unsupported by any real science. It’s one of those things that sounds logical on paper but is in fact nonsense. Such ideas tend to be viewed as “fact” due only to one prominent person believing it’s true because of a personal anecdote. Linus Pauling and vitamin C is another example of this. It’s the appeal-to-authority fallacy.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidkroll/2014/05/19/does-bakers-yeast-really-prevent-you-from-getting-drunk/?sh=d93fce759eea
Interesting, one benefit which is not disputed is vitamin b is a wonderful thing to have while drinking to prevent a hangover. Here in Australia this normally means a couple of spoons of Vegemite before bed. What is Vegemite…. Yeast extract,
Surely the bigger effect was from constantly NOT DRINKING FOR 15 MINUTES
Why would the yeast digest the alcohol? Seems more likely that it would digest the lactose in the yogurt (and all the other sugars in the stomach) and create MORE alcohol. Maybe ingesting alcohol dehydrogenase (ADH) would work, but seems unlikely. My guess is that Jim Koch pranking beer enthusiasts.
Interesting discussion on this. I think more testing is required. The youghurt could have lined the stomach, impacting absorption.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/yeast-alcohol-drunk/