We’ve all stumbled out of the club in the early hours and immediately wandered off in search of the nearest takeaway. Fuck the cab ride home – we want pizzas, filthy kebabs, ribs, a burger of any description, literally anything.
We crave it, in fact, we’d probably kill for it. And, let’s face it, we don’t limit gorging on a takeaway to the wee hours, post-sesh – it could be 9pm after a couple of cheeky after-work pints. But it’s always required.
And we’re rarely disappointed by whatever we end up choosing, are we? Because drunk food never disappoints. And science can tell us why.
Have you ever had the best takeaway of your life and decided to have it again sober and it’s not lived up to expectations?
That curry was the best in the whole entire world after a bottle of wine (alright, two. And some other drinks, we forget what they were but it was someone else’s round) but now it tastes like an aluminium carton of shit. And we can’t quite believe we happily paid over the odds for it and probably didn’t take our change because our takeaway ‘mate’ needed it more than us.
Have you ever wondered why this is? Why we enjoy a takeaway so much with a belly full of booze? If you haven’t, we bet you’re asking yourself now, aren’t you?
Well no need, the guys at DNews have got you covered. Scientifically covered.
Apparently, it’s something that has had many guessing for quite some time, as DNews presenter, Jules Suzdaltsev explains: “Alcohol is really calorically dense. A gram of pure alcohol contains more calories than a gram of carbohydrates or protein, and almost as many as in a gram of fat.”
There you have it, you learn something new every day – the word ‘calorically’ can be used in a sentence.
Anyway, taking into consideration how many calories there are in your favourite fizz, why do we feel the need to gorge on greasy food?
Well, in a study published earlier this year, scientists found that mice ate a lot more after they were plied with alcohol for three days straight than they did while completely sober.
Cosmopolitan reported that researchers found that certain neurons were more active following alcohol, which release a peptide (a small chain of amino acids, in case you’re interested) called AgRP (agoti-related protein).
And BAM, you’re so hungry you could eat a horse and all that jazz.
So, the sneaky little devil that is the peptide plays tricks on us by simultaneously suppressing the release of leptin – the hormone we have to regulate our appetite.
Basically, our brains are completely against us and any kind of healthy eating we try to do as soon as we’ve had a drink. Nice one, pal.
And that’s why it tastes so fucking good, because our bodies are essentially fibbing us into thinking we want it that badly – of course it’s going to take as great as it seems to.
We feel well and truly cheated by our own body. Beer anyway? Anyone?
