Science Questions

Do fizzy drinks make you drunk quicker?

Is it true that if you add fizzy mixers to alcoholic spirits you get drunk more quickly than if you added the same amount of still water? RJ Nilmot via email

This is a bit dodgy. Scientists have looked at whether champagne makes you tipsy more quickly. There was a piece of research done at the university of Surrey by a researcher called Fran Ridout, in about 1999. They got all the researchers in their laboratory one week to drink some still champagne that had been flattened by leaving it open for a while. Then a couple of weeks later they got them to drink the same amount of fizzy champagne. And after each drinking session they got them to do some simple tests to work out how well their brain was working. And they found that they were working less effectively after the fizzy drink, than after the non fizzy drink. But then of course there's a big placebo effect here because you know it's fizzy and so you're more likely to think that you're getting more drunk.

December 2006