Drinking alcohol while cooking causes overeating

Consuming alcohol while cooking can cause people to eat more – a phenomenon scientists have dubbed “the aperitif effect”.

Scientists have found that drinking alcohol while cooking leads people to eat more

The findings of the new study were published by the American Obesity Society in the journal Obesity.

The research saw 35 healthy, non-obese women attend two experimental sessions, during which they ate breakfast and then a late lunch around eight hours later.

Around two hours before consuming lunch, each women had a brain scan to discover how she responded to smells given off by food and other substances.
During the scan, half the women were administered an alcohol solution tailored to induce a “pleasant buzz”, while the other half were given saline solution.

In intervals, researchers intermittently pumped concentrated smells of cooking odours and neutral non-edible items into the spaces.

The results revealed those dosed with alcohol had higher levels of brain activity when smelling the food substances, and two thirds of the women in this group went on to eat “significantly more” than when they were just given saline solution.

Curiously, these women were found to have lower levels of the hormone “ghrelin” in their blood.

Ghrelin normally signals the brain that hunger has been sated, reducing appetite – however on average these women had larger appetites.
Further research is required, but overall the study concluded that alcohol causes malfunctions on appetite signaling between the gut and the brain.
Last year, a celebrity personal trainer warned average drinkers to be wary of their alcohol intake after compiling a revealing chart showing alcohol contains almost as many calories per gram as pure fat.