Drunken Christmas pudding

Who can’t resist a large helping of Christmas pudding? A lot of booze goes into a traditional Christmas pudding, so what does this dessert do to your alcohol level? For science, Katie Haylor volunteered to put this to the test...

Chris - Well it puts it up quite a bit apparently. I was looking on the internet at this. There have been a number of investigations into how much your blood alcohol can rise and allegedly 2 big portions of tiramisu is enough to put you over the drink drive limit, a very large helping of sherry trifle allegedly will also do this. If you have a particularly sweet tooth 150 liqueur chocolates would also potentially put you over the drink driving limit!

But that's why we thought we'd ask you to eat that cake which I must say I am not very impressed. Katie you've only got half of the Christmas pudding.

Katie - It serves 4 Chris! I like my food but that's a bit ridiculous.

Chris - Well potentially there should be enough in there to bust a breathalyser.

Katie - Will eating half of it will have made a difference? Well we’ll find out. Yeah I just happened to have a handy breathalyzer here.

Chris - There was a lady about 15 16 years ago who was stopped by the police because she had been weaving all over the road. She was found to be over the limit on breath alcohol and her defence in court which was accepted by the court was “I'd had two rather large helpings of Christmas cake” and it was soaked in whisky so she she was successfully let off. She said “I take drink driving very seriously I didn't realise” so Christmas cake can indeed put you over the limit so be careful.

Katie - So this is a mini alcohol breathalyzer for Europe apparently. So it's a small tube. It looks a little bit like a vial that you might get your blood put into if you are having a blood test that sort of shape. It's got a little scale on the side. The percentage scale is zero zero point two zero point five zero point eight percent. And if I follow the instructions correctly…. now I need to take a deep breath and exhale into any side of the tube twice for 10 seconds and then will have a little chat because after 4 minutes you'll compare the colour change against this colour change on this chart. So I will start the breathing.

Chris - Well you’re certainly going red!