Celebrating with Alcohol and Doing It Right

Unless your doctor forbids it, you're unlikely to get through the holiday season without downing at least one alcoholic beverage.  And even if you turn down all the booze you're offered, it's hard to avoid consuming spiked food.  Various alcoholic products make everything from appetizers to desserts taste absolutely irresistible.  Now this isn't necessarily bad.  As we pointed out in last year's article, alcohol is healthy IN MODERATION.  This year, new research has expanded upon that point.

After the good news about the health benefits of boozing just a little, we move on to other newsworthy tidbits about wine and spirits--for example, how to drink without getting drunk, how to overcome a hangover if you do drink too much, how to find a use for leftover champagne, and how to cook with that zing that alcohol provides without actually using alcohol.

Alcohol and Health

Last year, we reported that moderate drinking is associated with a 15-40% lower risk of coronary heart disease, and that moderate drinkers live longer than people who don't drink alcohol at all.  Moderate drinking meaning one drink a day for women and two for men.  One drink means 1.5 oz. of 80-proof distilled spirits, 5 oz. of wine, or 12 oz. of beer. In case you're wondering why women should drink less alcohol than men, the answer is that women are generally smaller and have less body water and more fat than men. According the University of California, Berkeley Wellness Letter (August 2012), alcohol is diluted in body water and not absorbed in fat.  Furthermore, the stomach enzyme that breaks down alcohol before it reaches the bloodstream is less active in women. 

More recently (January 2013), the University of California, Berkeley Wellness Letter  reported on studies demonstrating two more benefits that moderate drinking may provide. These studies involved only women, but moderate alcohol may also provide the same benefits for men.  One study showed that moderate alcohol consumption may slow bone loss in postmenopausal women.  A second study reported that women who drank more than 3 alcoholic beverages a week had half the risk of developing rheumatoid arthritis.  (Other studies have linked alcohol to a reduction in symptoms in people who already have the disease.)

Something for Everyone: How to Avoid Intoxication; How to Treat a Hangover

Almost everyone enjoys drinking, but almost no one wants the physical discomfort and social embarrassment of being drunk--or the agony of a hangover the next day.  So we asked one of our site's Advisory Board members, food scientist Dr. Catherine Cutter, how a person can enjoy booze but not develop uncomfortable effects from it.  Here are her suggestions: 1) Dilute your wine with fruit juice or soda.  2) Eat while your drink.  Carbohydrates and proteins can slow down the absorption of alcohol.  3) Switch to a non-alcoholic drink (for example, club soda or water) periodically to keep you rehydrated and to dilute the alcohol in your system.  4)  So you won't be misled by erroneous advice, read the WebMd article entitled "9 Myths About Your Hangover." Click here to reach it. (But first, finish reading this Shelf Life Advice article!)

Obviously, the best way to avoid a hangover is to drink moderately or not at all.  But, clearly, that solution isn't going to be adopted by everyone.  My next suggestion for treating a hangover is to consult another link. Advice from About.com largely involves rehydration with water, sports drinks and/or fruit juices; restoring lost vitamins and nutrients by eating eggs, bananas, fruit; and that magic cure-all every mother recommends--chicken soup.

Uses for Leftover Champagne

ShopSmart, a Consumer Reports publication, suggests the following uses for extra champagne:

- Use it for cooking (instead of wine), especially in seafood dishes such as shrimp risotto or in cheese fondue.

- Use it as a substitute for vinegar in salad dressings or for a marinade (combined with citrus juice) for root vegetables such as sweet potatoes or carrots.

- Add a splash to desserts to make champagne cake, champagne grapefruit sorbet, and so on.  Google for dessert recipes with champagne.

- Make a fizzy cocktail such as a poinsettia, a volcano, or a mimosa.  Here's a site that can help you with champagne recipes: http://www.avalonwine.com/champagne-cocktail-recipes.php

No doubt there are more. 

Holiday Cooking--with and without Alcohol

It's a common belief that, when you cook with alcohol, most of the alcohol it burned off by the cooking.  In fact, that's not generally the case.  How much alcohol is lost depends up the type and the length of the cooking process as well as the size of the pan.  If you're cooking for folks that should avoid alcohol--let's say young children, members of Alcoholics Anonymous, or people that are told to avoid alcohol for medical reasons--you may want to consult this article on the website What's Cooking America.  It contains a chart that answers many questions about how much alcohol is retained after cooking by different methods.   Examples:  if you add alcohol to boiling liquid and remove it from the heat, 85% of the alcohol will be retained.  If you bake or simmer for 15 minutes alcohol that has been stirred into a mixture, 40% of the alcohol will remain; after 2 hours of such cooking, only 10% of the alcoholic content you started with will still be in the food.

So what should you do if your dinner guests include folks who shouldn't have alcohol even in their food?  Here's another What's Cooking America page that answers the question with substitutions: http://whatscookingamerica.net/alcoholsub.htm.  Some examples: ginger ale or apple cider can substitute for champagne; non-alcoholic vanilla extract can substitute for bourbon; rice vinegar can substitute for sake; orange juice or apple juice can replace sherry. 

Source(s):

Catherine N. Cutter, Ph.D., Pennsylvania State University, Dept. of Food Science

University of California, Berkeley Wellness Letter August 2012 and January 2013.

webMd.com "9 Myths About Your Hangover"

http://women.webmd.com/features/9-myths-about-your-hangover

whatscookingamerica.net  "Alcohol Burn Off in Cooking - Does Alcohol Really Boil Away in Cooking?"

http://whatscookingamerica.net/Q-A/AlcoholCooking.htm

whatscookingamerica "Alcohol Substitutions in Cooking"

http://whatscookingamerica.net/alcoholsub.htm

about.com  "The Cures and Remedies for Hangovers: What Does and Does Not Work"

http://alcoholism.about.com/od/hangovers/a/cures.htm

ShopSmart magazine "What to do with the leftovers" January 2013.

avalonwine.com  "Champagne Drinks and Cocktail Recipes"

http://www.avalonwine.com/champagne-cocktail-recipes.php