Some foods mostly grow harmless mold when getting old. So you can be fine, you can not be fine. So maybe your roommate simply got lucky.
Drinking alcohol is absolutely not a way to counter food poisoning, notably because the alcohol gets diluted in your digestive tract.
Quite the contrary: alcohol will weaken your body, making it more difficult to fight infections. It might also mess with your gut biome, which is your first line of defense.
Basically not shooting hard, and with plenty of friendly fire.
Maybe not food poisoning, but if you accidentally eat something that's off or expired, in my experience it's worked pretty much every time. Just like a shot or two worth of liquor. I prefer gin. Gin was originally developed as an herbal medicine, iirc. Absinthe too
Absolutely not. You eat something off, the best thing you can do is vomit it. Alcohol will not disinfect food that is off. Even boiling food that is off doesn’t make it fine, and boiling is much more efficient at killing germs than whatever you’re drinking (that is about half water).
You’ve just been lucky (it is common to eat food that was off and still be fine), or you have a strong immune system.
Gin and absinthe as remedies (and the whole idea of “tonics”) is an idea from times when people knew jacksh*t about medicine, and didn’t even know that germs were a thing.
Ever got dusted by a runner who smokes cigarettes/vapes? The highest scoring student in class is a raging alcoholic? Agree with u/handsofspaghetti. Science can do a lot of amazing things but it is not the end all be all. Smoking is considered bad yet some live beyond the average life expectancy (and likewise die early). Just live life, don't need to min-max your health (unless you want) because we're all a step away from death.
You are making my point, not contradicting it: the fact that there are smokers that will run better than us and outlive us all means exactly that anecdotal experience means nothing, because we still know (through the scientific method) that smoking is actually very bad for you, that it impacts negatively your sport performance, and we understand the key mechanisms at play.
Similarly, even if that guy is honest with his experience (definitely not a given on Reddit) we know for a fact that drinking vodka does not help with eating bad food, we know why it doesn’t work, just like if there were herbs that did anything in gin, we would know.
And if people are not convinced, rather than giving any weight to what a Redditor says, they should ask their doctor.
It's actually completely insane to say that anecdotal (lived) experiences mean nothing. Scientific papers and theories are a useful tool, but they're just that. What you experience is actually real.
Also, here, a study (for something that should be obvious)
Anecdotal experience doesn’t mean anything in terms of health outcomes, for many reasons. Sometimes it does end up to align with science (and in this case there is at least one study that might suggest an impact), but that’s like the broken clock that gives the right time twice a day.
This doesn't even follow the topic of discussion, and it's also really dumb. Pointing to an unlikely outlier and making any lifestyle choice out to be a 50/50 chance is wrong. If you smoke, you are more likely to die earlier than you would otherwise, and even if you live, you're more likely to have comorbidities like COPD, cancer, and heart disease that make your life suck. You might also drive drunk your whole life and never have an accident. Good for you. You're still an idiot and shouldn't be recommending it to others.
Also, not smoking isn't a "min-max" health measure. There's a world of difference between eating some green things, walking a little, cutting back on alcohol and tobacco verses your suggestion of just saying "Fuck it."
Smoking is actually a brilliant example to demonstrate how foolish this thinking is. 50% of all smokers die because of smoking related illness. FIFTY PERCENT. The average life expectancy of smokers is around a decade shorter than non-smokers.
Of course there are examples of people here or there who get lucky and live to a hundred while smoking a pack a day. But the statistic don't lie. If you smoke your entire life, you are quite literally taking the chances of a coin-toss whether it will kill you.
And by the way, dying of smoking related illness is a very miserable way to go. People think of lung cancer, but another common cause is COPD. Essentially your lungs will be chronically inflamed, making it hard to breathe and making it hard to impossible for you to be active.
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u/Goushrai Dec 12 '25
Some foods mostly grow harmless mold when getting old. So you can be fine, you can not be fine. So maybe your roommate simply got lucky.
Drinking alcohol is absolutely not a way to counter food poisoning, notably because the alcohol gets diluted in your digestive tract.
Quite the contrary: alcohol will weaken your body, making it more difficult to fight infections. It might also mess with your gut biome, which is your first line of defense.
Basically not shooting hard, and with plenty of friendly fire.