What is better to eat after drinking?

For business white-collar workers, irregular meals and too many dinner and drinking parties are often one of their biggest headaches. Japanese white-collar men are best known around the world for going to an izakaya with their colleagues to have a drink before going home after working overtime every day. After drinking, most people will have the idea of ​​"wanting to eat something", and Japanese men often eat a bowl of bone soup ramen after drinking. What is the reason for this idea? Japanese experts explain it to you and give you some good suggestions on how to match drinking with food, so that you can be healthier if you have to drink!

After drinking, you need to take in nutrients necessary to break down alcohol

In fact, the desire to eat after drinking is not due to the atmosphere, but a loyal need of the body. This is because the process from the time alcohol enters the human body to the time it is broken down requires the participation of a large amount of nutrients, and eating is the process of replenishing nutrients.

After alcohol enters the human body, 20% is absorbed in the stomach, and the remaining 80% is absorbed into the blood in the small intestine and sent to the liver through the blood, where the alcohol is gradually broken down. In this decomposition process, non-essential amino acids alanine, glutamic acid, vitamin B1 and zinc are indispensable and important nutrients involved in metabolism.

It can be said that a bowl of bone broth ramen with seafood contains all the nutrients you need. Pork, pork gelatin, dried bonito, etc. are rich in alanine, wheat protein and soybeans are rich in glutamic acid, and cereals also contain a certain amount of vitamin B1. Therefore, just a bowl of ramen can supplement many of the necessary nutrients. If you add some shellfish like oysters to the ramen, you can supplement the mineral zinc at the same time. It can be said that a bowl of bone broth seafood ramen is a good nutritional food for drinkers after drinking.

Alcohol produces harmful substance formaldehyde during the decomposition process, which is also one of the main culprits of hangovers. The sooner the liver breaks it down into harmless acetic acid, water and carbon dioxide, the better. If the liver cannot break down alcohol well due to insufficient nutrients during or after drinking, the body will naturally have related needs.

Be careful about consuming too much fat while drinking

Perhaps many people think that eating a bowl of noodles after drinking alcohol has only benefits and no harm, but it is particularly important to remind you that alcohol itself contains energy and can stimulate the body's appetite. Eating too much food after drinking alcohol can easily lead to excessive energy intake, especially bone broth ramen with meat, which contains more energy.

While drinking, choosing snacks to go with alcohol is also a "skill", because normal drinking does not make people feel full, so people are prone to eat too many snacks unknowingly while drinking. At this time, they may not actually consume nutrients that are beneficial to the decomposition of alcohol, but instead consume too much fat and salt. When eating ramen, since the bone broth contains more fat, the digestion time of food is increased, the stomach may not be able to rest well all night, and bloating is likely to occur the next day. Therefore, it can be said that although eating ramen can supplement some essential nutrients, it does not mean that it has no harm.

So, what should you eat when drinking? Japanese experts believe that when you start drinking, you might as well use sunflower seeds as a snack. Sunflower seeds are rich in vitamin B1, and vitamin B1 is a water-soluble vitamin. It takes about 3 hours from ingestion to take effect. Therefore, you might as well eat some sunflower seeds before and during drinking, which is more conducive to the role of vitamin B1 in helping to break down alcohol. The only thing to note is that sunflower seeds contain more oil, so the consumption of sunflower seeds is about a handful. But sometimes, when you drink a lot of alcohol, essential nutrients may be used up quickly. Therefore, you can choose healthy side dishes while drinking, such as light steamed shrimp or cold seafood, etc. It is better not to choose side dishes with high fat content or unhealthy cooking methods such as barbecued and fried foods. This way, you can supplement essential nutrients while reducing the extra intake of fat and energy.