WHAT THE RESEARCH SUGGESTS
Several small studies on food-borne illness outbreaks have indeed found that consuming alcohol was associated with protection from food poisoning, but they all have limitations.
In the study cited in the TikTok video, which was published in 2002, researchers described a salmonella outbreak that began at a 120-person banquet in Spain. At least 47 people became ill with vomiting or diarrhoea, along with stomach cramps, fever or headache, after consuming contaminated tuna sandwiches and potato salad.
The researchers found that those who reported having three or more drinks at the celebration were 46 per cent less likely to become ill than those who didn’t drink; and those who had up to three drinks were 27 per cent less likely to develop symptoms.
Likewise, in a 1992 study of a 61-person outbreak of hepatitis A from raw oysters in Florida, researchers found that those who reported drinking wine, whisky or cocktails with the oysters were 90 per cent less likely to get sick than those who did not drink. Those who consumed beer, however, did not seem to be protected – the researchers hypothesised this was perhaps because beer has a lower alcohol concentration than the other beverages.
These studies support the theory that alcohol might interrupt the pathogens in people’s guts before they can cause illness, said Donald Schaffner, a professor of food science at Rutgers University. This is plausible, he said, since alcohol can kill bacteria and inactivate some viruses; that’s why it’s used in hand sanitisers and surface disinfectants.
But these small, decades-old studies can only show correlations between drinking and fewer illnesses; they can’t prove that alcohol prevented food poisoning, said Matthew Moore, an associate professor of food science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
He recommended taking those findings “with a serious grain of salt.”
It’s possible, for example, that some of the people who didn’t drink in those studies were abstaining for health reasons, which could have explained why they were more susceptible to food poisoning.
Researchers have not directly tested how drinking might influence food poisoning risk in a clinical trial, which could control for differences between people who do and don’t drink, Dr Moore said. And in at least one outbreak of 33 people sickened with hepatitis E from shellfish on a cruise, researchers came to a different conclusion: Only those who drank alcohol were infected while the abstainers remained healthy.
