sawyl | Hobbits, beer, and metabolic processes

How much do hobbits need to drink to get drunk? Over on Tor, Emily Asher-Perrin has run the numbers and come up with a answer: around half a pint an hour with anything more putting them in lost weekend territory.

In related news, Tuesday's Guardian published a letter form reader who had written in about a piece claiming that calories from alcohol was a greater problem for adult populations than calories from soft drinks.

The notion that alcohol is fattening is raised in your pages. By what metabolic pathway is this achieved in the body? The only organisms I know that utilise alcohol are certain bacteria that downgrade it further to vinegar - acetic acid. It may be that some alcoholic drinks contain sugar too. But it is the sugar that fattens, not the alcohol.

Fortunately, today's paper features a follow-up letter from a biochemist gently correcting the original writer's scientific ignorance, ending with the pithy comment:

Of course, a sugary alcoholic drink will still have more calories than the equivalent-strength non-sugary one, but sadly, dry champagne is not calorie-free.

Ouch.