Did you know that eating white bread, donuts and pizza dough can register positive blood-alcohol readings on a Breathalyzer Machine? Sounds absurd—but it's true. A number of experiments were conducted where the BAC of a normal person was recorded by the breath machine to be 0.0% .
Additionally, certain types of food can cause a false positive. This includes foods that contain alcohol but don't have a high enough concentration to make you intoxicated. Fruit, hot sauce, energy drinks, fermented sodas and protein bars can also produce a false positive.
Does pizza contain alcohol? Pizza dough can smell like beer after it has risen. The yeast has started fermentation, which produces alcohol as a by-product. This is normal, although too much fermentation will give the dough a sour, alcoholic taste when baked.
Both pizza and bread can result in a failed breathalyser test due to the production of alcohol in the fermentation process.
Stomach Yeast can Cause a False Positive on a Breath Test.
Additionally, the yeast used in bread and cakes contains a residual amount of alcohol. It is impossible to remove the alcohol in the baking process. Therefore eating cakes and bread can set off the breathalyzer by a small percentage.
Carb-heavy foods like bread, crackers, sandwiches, and pasta are typically easy to digest, which is what your body needs at this point. The myth that eating tacos, pizza, and burgers will help "soak up" the alcohol is just wrong. "Greasy food doesn't soak up anything, it's not soluble in water," White said.
What Causes Inaccurate Results? Studies have shown that breathalyzer readings vary at least 15% from actual blood alcohol levels, with 23% of subjects having breathalyzer results giving readings that are in excess of their true blood alcohol levels.
Food and beverages other than alcohol: Many foods contain alcohol in low enough content to not cause intoxication but high enough to throw off a breathalyzer reading. These include fermented drinks, like kombucha, ripe fruits, energy drinks, protein bars, nonalcoholic wine and beer, hot sauce, some nuts, and cinnamon.
Drink water, non-flavored black coffee, or tea. AVOID foods like: Pasta, whole grain products, bran, high fiber cereals, granola, ect. Fruit juices, applesauce, apricots, bananas, cantaloupe, canned fruit cocktail, grapes, honeydew melon, peaches, watermelon.
For example, if you have the rare condition known as auto-brewery syndrome, you might fail a breath test without having anything to drink. Even more common conditions, like diabetes, can affect chemical breath testing. In fact, diets like the keto diet could also result in a false positive on a chemical breath test.
Generally, breathalyzer tests are only accurate approximately 40% of the time. Factor into that statistic that the testing equipment itself has an inherent margin of error between . 005 and . 02% in its BAC readings.
Meats and baked goods that are cooked for 25 minutes without being stirred retain 45 percent of alcohol. Stews and other dishes that simmer for two and one-half hours tend to have the lowest amounts, but they retain about five percent of the alcohol.
A study from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Nutrient Data lab confirmed this and added that food baked or simmered in alcohol for 15 minutes still retains 40 percent of the alcohol. After an hour of cooking, 25 percent of the alcohol remains, and even after two and a half hours there's still 5 percent of it.
How Does Eating Effect BAC? Eating before, or during the course of drinking, slows the rate at which alcohol is absorbed into a person's body. This decrease in absorption means less alcohol enters the bloodstream, as compared to the situation when no food is eaten.
Consuming nonalcoholic beer and wine in larger amounts may also produce false positive results because such products may contain a small amount of alcohol. Eating baker's yeast with sugar, drinking large amounts of apple juice, or even eating ripe bananas may cause detectable amounts of EtG and EtS in urine.
For example, bread and other baked goods include yeasts that also create a residential amount of alcohol that remains after the baking process. Common types of foods that can cause false readings also include Honey Buns, ripe fruits, protein bars, hot sauces, sugarless gums, and dishes cooked in alcohol.
Greasy food might curb a craving, but they won't rebalance your blood sugar levels. Cold showers stress the body and slow down the sobering process.
Acidic foods such as pizza and hot sauce should be avoided before consuming alcohol. "The tomato sauce in pizza is acidic," says Blum. "When you drink alcohol, this can lead to major heartburn or acid reflux."
Foods high in protein and healthy fats, like yogurt and salmon, can help slow alcohol absorption. Avocados and bananas also contain plenty of potassium, which you might lose after drinking.
The results indicated that holding your breath for 30 seconds before exhaling increased the blood-alcohol concentration (BAC) by 15.7%. Hyperventilating for 20 seconds immediately before the analyses of breath, on the other hand, decreased the blood-alcohol level by 10.6%.
24 hours before your breath test, you may only consume the following foods: Plain White Bread. Plain White Rice.