There are countless urban legends about drinking, from supposed wisdom about what gets you drunk the quickest, to tips on how to avoid a hangover, to rules of thumb for how you should buy and serve a fine wine. Many of them, however, aren’t rooted in science or data. Here are 5 things you’ve heard about alcohol and drinking that aren’t actually true.
Yes, hard liquor has a higher alcohol content than beer. But as long as you’re drinking them at the same speed, a shot of liquor in a mixer should give you the same buzz as a 12-ounce beer. Shots tend to get people more drunk because they take them more quickly than they would drink a beer or a glass of wine.
Studies show that about 25 percent of people don’t get hangovers. Lucky folks! It’s possible that this is because they don’t drink as much as they think they’re drinking, or it could be because of some as yet unknown genetic quirk. One study of Australian twins found that genetics were responsible for 40 to 45 percent of the difference in hangover frequency between people.
There isn’t anything more fattening about beer than any other alcohol. All alcohol is caloric and can lead to weight gain. The reason people associate a big gut with drinking too many brewskies might be because beer is consumed in larger quantities than liquor or wine.
Long-term hard drinking isn’t great for the brain, but alcohol doesn’t kill brain cells like your mother warned it did. It does, however, impair brain function over time. Drinking can damage the ends ofneurons, making it more difficult for them to relay signals. But that’s not quite the same thing as destroying entire cells.
You would be forgiven for thinking this, as sake is often sold as a rice wine. But in fact, it’s more like a rice beer. Wines are alcoholic beverages made from fermented grape juice, and some expand that definition to include any and all fruit. But the process to make sake, which includes milling the grains of rice and fermenting them for weeks, is more akin to the beer-making process.