Do Asians get drunk faster because they like tea?
I just listened to an entertaining iTunesU podcast on Nutrition by Berkeley University taught by Nancy Amy. The topic: Alcohol
“That men should put an enemy in their mouths to steal away their brains” is the Shakespeare quote that opens the discussion.
Nancy explains how alcohol enters your stomach and gets absorbed so quickly that it can get to your brain in less than a minute. As stated by Bert Valley, alcohol has been consumed for over 10000 years. One reason that made our ancestors drink was the fact that people knew about the contamination of water and the impacts this could have on the human body (e.g. diseases). Since not many people had access to clean water they simply used fermentation to purify the water. That is one important reason why alcoholic beverages were so popular in the Western world back in ancient times…
In Asia another method became popular to purify water and avoid diseases: cooking water and brewing tea.
As in Western Europe alcohol was consumed over generations, the gene that helps us absorb a fair part of the alcohol became a quite important feature in daily life while in the Asian world, the gene was not needed and therefore did not develop as strongly in the Asian gene pool.
Interesting that the issue of water contaminations brought us to a regular consumption of alcohol, isn’t it?
For more lectures on Nutrition by Berkeley University have a look here
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