Golden Milk 2.0
Have you tried the drink Golden Milk? I have, and if it's well made it's a real treat.
And now for something (almost) completely different. This morning I read an article from Science Daily where they interview Professor Raffaele Mezzenga at ETH Zürich. They have developed a gel1 that when swallowed before or during consumption of alcohol breaks down much of the alcohol before it enters the blood stream.
The gel
The gel consists of whey protein cooked for hours; adding salt and water makes it into a nice gel. The protein gel is then dunked into an iron bath to make single iron atoms bind to the surface. These will be the catalysts that break down the alcohol into acetic acid, making it non toxic to our bodies. For this reaction to start in the intestines, hydrogen peroxide is needed in a small amount. This can be achieved by adding gold to the equation, which 1) works as a catalyst for the making of hydrogen peroxide and 2) being a precious metal is not itself digested and thus effective for a longer time in the intestines.
Possible uses
In short this means that you can drink alcohol without he damaging effects on your system, especially the liver. The professor says it's still better not to drink at all, from a health perspective. But if you want to enjoy some alcoholic beverage without the negative effects this can be a way to go. A little caveat for some people2 may be that you won't get drunk either. I suppose this will be for all those claiming to only drink alcohol for the taste of it. And perhaps a nicer solution than Disulfiram for AA people?
To sum up
So they have basically made a really thick drink from whey and actual friggin' gold. Surely this is a new take on Golden Milk? Just as the original it claims to have a healthy impact on your life. In Sweden we have a saying that goes Varannan vatten and is used during parties when someone gets a bit to drunk. The essence of it is "every other drink from now on should be pure water". I foresee that this expression in the future will be Varannan gel.
Jiaqi Su, Pengjie Wang, Wei Zhou, Mohammad Peydayesh, Jiangtao Zhou, Tonghui Jin, Felix Donat, Cuiyuan Jin, Lu Xia, Kaiwen Wang, Fazheng Ren, Paul Van der Meeren, F. Pelayo GarcÃa de Arquer, Raffaele Mezzenga. Single-site iron-anchored amyloid hydrogels as catalytic platforms for alcohol detoxification. Nature Nanotechnology, 2024; DOI: 10.1038/s41565-024-01657-7↩
Most people here in Sweden, if I should make a not so wild guess.↩