Tag: food industry

Are you the sort who feels rotten after just one glass of wine, while your friends can down half a bottle or more and feel just fine?

There are many reasons people react to small amounts of booze badly — even the make-up of your gut microbes can play a part — and there are steps you can take to help.

People who feel ill after only one or two drinks often assume they have some kind of allergy to alcohol. In fact, a true allergy is really rare and the symptoms, such as difficulty breathing and abdominal pain, for example, tend to be severe enough to ensure you never touch a drop again.

More common is an alcohol intolerance. This is usually linked to a genetic fault, which means you produce a less active form of an enzyme called aldehyde dehydrogenase.

Are you the sort who feels rotten after just one glass of wine, while your friends can down half a bottle or more and feel just fine?, writes Dr Megan Rossi (pictured)

The liver initially breaks alcohol down into acetaldehyde and, at this point, this enzyme should get to work turning it into acetic acid (the main component of everyday vinegar).

If aldehyde dehydrogenase doesn’t do its job, then acetaldehyde, which is toxic, lingers in the body, causing a cascade of symptoms that often include nausea and vomiting as the body tries to expel it — as well as headaches. It can also cause the blood vessels to widen, leading to facial flushing and a stuffy nose.

How much alcohol anyone with an intolerance can withstand before feeling sick varies — I see people in clinics who can hold a few glasses fine and others who can barely sniff a drink. I’m afraid the only way round this one is to find your limits.

For others, it may be a component of booze — not the alcohol itself — that’s the problem: for example, the gluten in beer or sulphites added as preservatives to wines and also present in the grapes (levels tend to be higher in white wines) .

Sulphites can trigger a range of symptoms including stuffy nose, wheezing, hives and bad hangovers — people with eczema and asthma can be especially sensitive to them.

Swapping to organic wines might help — while they’ll have some sulphites from the grapes, they won’t have added sulphites, so might be easier to tolerate.

A study published in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition in 2019 found that switching to organic wine led to fewer alcohol-induced headaches among those sensitive to sulphites.

Histamines in wine and beer can also cause a problem. This chemical is produced as part of the fermentation process and can trigger a hot, red face, hives, nausea or diarrhea when you drink it.

The histamine level can vary with the drink, depending on the vintage, type and fermentation process (red wine contains more than white, with 60 to 3,800 micrograms per liter, while white has between three and 120 micrograms), so it’s a question of trial and error to see which suits you.

A more surprising factor in all this is the health of your gut microbes. Research suggests that they support the work of the liver — the so-called gut-liver axis.

So, if your gut microbes are not in good shape, your liver might not be processing alcohol as effectively as it could.

While our understanding of the link between gut microbes and liver function is still in its infancy, one study from the Institute of Liver and Biliary Sciences in New Delhi, India, in 2017, found that giving people with liver disease a daily faecal transplant (ie , a treated stool transplant, which provides a new community of gut microbes) for a week brought about ‘significant’ improvements in liver function, and that improvement remained a year later.

What we do know for certain is that excess alcohol can impact our gut microbes, especially those higher up our gut, where the alcohol is absorbed.

For others, it may be a component of booze — not the alcohol itself — that’s the problem: for example, the gluten in beer or sulphites added as preservatives to wines and also present in the grapes (levels tend to be higher in white wines)

In turn, they produce less of the organic fatty acids such as butyrate which helps fuel the protective gut lining: at the same time, alcohol itself irritates and weakens our gut walls.

As a result, toxins are more easily able to pass from our

New York
CNN Business
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‘Tis the season to mix milk into your soda. According to Pepsi, however.

Pepsi launched a Thursday campaign encouraging customers to try the combination and use the hashtag #PilkandCookies (as in Pepsi plus milk) to showcase their Santa-friendly concoctions. Those who participate in the online challenge running through Christmas Day will have the chance to win cash.

“Combining Pepsi and milk has long been a secret hack among Pepsi fans,” said Todd Kaplan, Pepsi’s chief marketing officer, in a statement about the campaign.

Pepsi is now publicizing the mix as its spin on “dirty soda,” a popular TikTok trend that combines soda with syrup and cream. Companies like PepsiCo (PEP) pay attention to what’s happening on TikTok, and often look for ways to get in on trends as a way to stay relevant to young consumers.

“With the rise of the ‘dirty soda’ trend on TikTok and throughout the country, we thought Pilk and Cookies would be a great way to unapologetically celebrate the holidays,” said Kaplan.

To make the campaign even trendier, Pepsi tapped Lindsay Lohan, star of the Netflix (NFLX) Christmas movie “Falling for Christmas,” to promote the combination.

Pepsi is recommending a number of recipes for those who want to go beyond just Pepsi and milk, perhaps hoping to launch their own viral combination.

A handful of those recipes include the Naughty & Ice, which is Pepsi with one cup of whole milk, one tablespoon of heavy cream and one tablespoon of vanilla cream, plus Pepsi; the Cherry on Top combines Pepsi Wild Cherry with half a cup of 2% milk, two tablespoons of heavy cream and two tablespoons of caramel creamer; and the Snow Fl(oat) is Pepsi Zero Sugar and half a cup of oat milk with four tablespoons of caramel creamer.

The soda cocktails are relatively new to TikTok — but they have been popular for years in Utah, which has a high concentration of Mormons, some of whom abstain from alcohol and hot beverages.

TikTok discovered the drink after Gen-Z pop star Olivia Rodrigo posted a photo of herself holding a Swig cup in December last year, sending fans in search of answers about the Utah-based chain. Swig, which calls itself “home of the original dirty soda,” has been around since 2010 and serves a wide array of the carbonated mash-ups.

The trend quickly took off, Eater reported in April, saying “TikTok is now repeated with more than 700,000 mentions of the #dirtysoda hashtag, most of which accompany videos of creators showing viewers how to make their own dirty sodas at home.”

Viral food sensations have inspired companies to capitalize on trends, sometimes even creating new products based on what they see.

In September 2020, for example, Dunkin’ partnered with TikTok star Charli D’Amelio on a limited-time drink called The Charli — cold brew with whole milk and three pumps of caramel swirl — inspired by D’Amelio’s favorite order. On launch day, Dunkin’ hit a record for daily active app users. And last year, Starbucks experimented with selling the TikTok-popular Iced Matcha Latte with Chai on social platforms.

Kraft Heinz (KHC) this year launched Dip & Crunch, a burger dipping sauce packaged with “salty potato crunchers.” The idea is for people to dip a burger or sandwich into the sauce, then into the crunchers, and then take a bite — something that had apparently been trending on TikTok with some loving the trend and others questioning it.

“For us to hear that debate online, then bring it to life, is an example of how we’re listening,” Sanjiv Gajiwala, then Kraft Heinz North America’s chief growth officer, told Fast Company in April. Now, you can find videos of TikTok influencers testing out the product in ads, and others reviewing it for their followers.