Effect of a Snack Bar Optimized to Reduce Alcohol Bioavailability: A Randomized Controlled Clinical Trial in Healthy Individuals

Abstract

Alcohol intoxication impairs judgment and reaction times and the level of blood alcohol concentration (BAC) is highly correlated with accidents and injury. We hypothesized that a food optimized to delay gastric emptying, a reduced alcohol bioavailability bar (RABB), would decrease postprandial BAC and alcohol bioavailability with greater caloric-efficiency than control foods. Therefore, we evaluated the RABB in a randomized, crossover trial in 21 overnight fasted healthy adults (10 male, 11 female). Just before consuming a moderate dose of alcohol (0.3-0.35 g/kg body weight), participants ate either (1) no food (NF, 0 kcal), (2) the RABB (210 kcal), (3) a savory snack mix (SSM, 210 kcal), or (4) a multicomponent meal (MCM, 635 kcal) and their BAC was measured over 90 minutes using a breathalyzer, the primary endpoint being peak BAC (pBAC). pBACs were analyzed by repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) (F = 107.5, P < .0001) with the differences between means assessed using Tukey's honestly significant difference test. The pBAC of each group was different (P < .001) from all other groups (NF = 0.064 ± 0.003, SSM = 0.047 ± 0.002, RABB = 0.031 ± 0.002, MCM = 0.020 ± 0.002%; mean ± standard error of the mean). Furthermore, the bioavailability of alcohol over 90 minutes (BA90) was reduced compared to the NF group by similar margins (SSM = 22.0 ± 2.2, RABB = 45.0 ± 3.8, MCM = 67.9 ± 3.1%) with the mean BA90 of each group different from all other groups (P < .001). Compared to the NF condition, the average reduction of pBAC per 100 calories of food consumed was higher for the RABB (24.0%) than either the SSM (11.8%) or the MCM (10.7%). This study demonstrates that the RABB can reduce both pBAC and alcohol bioavailability with high caloric-efficiency.

Keywords: BAC; binge drinking; first pass metabolism; food; gastric emptying; intoxication; protein.

FIG. 1.

Flowchart of the study procedures. Each subject visited the clinic on four occasions, for each arm of the study, with a >5-day washout period between visits.

FIG. 2.

BAC measurements of the participants. (a–d) Example BAC-time plots of four participants, 10 minute duration of drinking is shaded yellow, pBAC for each plot indicated by arrow. (a) Sixty-four-year-old female. (b) Forty-two-year-old female. (c) Forty-year-old male. (d) Thirty-one-year-old male. (e) Graphs of the aggregated BAC-time plots for all 21 participants. Each datapoint represents the mean of all BAC values at a given timepoint, error bars are the 95% confidence interval. Arrows indicate the peak of the aggregated BACs, significant difference from RABB indicated by *P < .01, **P < .001, ***P < .0001. (f) Boxplots of the pBACs for all participants (n = 21), females (n = 11), and males (n = 10). The line separating the red and green is the median, the “x” marks the mean, box top and bottom marks upper and lower quartiles, whiskers define the total range of values. BAC, blood alcohol concentration; pBAC, peak BAC; RABB, reduced alcohol bioavailability bar.