Do you know vegans and vegetarians who eat meat when they drink a fair amount of alcohol?
After an evening out at the bar, quite a few die-hard plant-based eaters gorge themselves on nuggets or hamburgers at McDonald’s.
According to surveys, about a third of vegetarians eat meat when they are drunk, with 69% of them doing so in secret from friends and family.
Of those who ate meat while drunk, 39% admitted to eating kebabs, 34% beef burgers and 27% bacon.
Why is this happening?
Use meat в drunk Condition
Some time ago, the University of Liverpool conducted a study on why people crave fast food when they are drunk. The researchers noticed that 50 students who drank a glass of lemonade with vodka ate more cookies than those who were offered a soft drink.
In other words, when we are intoxicated, we lose self-control and find it harder to say no.
Craving for fast food
Many people believe that we have a desire to eat fast food for two reasons. First, fast food is salty and pleasant in texture – crispy chips, fried bacon. According to the second version, cravings for fast food are the result of the fact that the body requires certain macronutrients.
Our brains can’t resist this juicy mixture of fat, sugar and protein. Because of this combination, we think that we are properly nourishing the body, although it turns out exactly the opposite.
Another factor explaining this situation is the production of galanin. Galanin is a neurotransmitter, a very small protein found primarily in the nervous system, including the brain and spinal cord.
According to research, with an increase in galanin levels, we begin to eat more food. Alcohol also increases the level of galanin in our brain.
So eating fatty foods and drinking alcohol causes the body to produce more galanin, which in turn causes you to eat more fat and drink more alcohol. In other words, it’s a vicious circle.
flashback effect
Another theory is that once you have eaten something very tasty, your brain registers and remembers this feeling. This means that every time you see or smell that food, your brain starts to replay those same memories and reactions.
Thus, if you ate junk food at night before you switched to a plant-based diet, you will have to fight with your subconscious mind every time you pass by a kebab shop at 2 a.m.
Not only does your brain know it’s going to get a dose of protein, fat, and glucose — a macro balance that gets out of hand when alcohol is high — it also remembers how good junk food tastes, even if they themselves you don’t want to remember it.
How to be vegans late at night?
The problem is probably that there are few vegan fast foods that vegans can check out in the evenings. Instead, tipsy vegans end up at McDonald’s, tempting with a large selection of junk food they once loved.
Perhaps in the future, vegan entrepreneurs will realize that this is a good niche for starting a business, and the situation will change.