We all know that tomato juice with its frosty phlegm-like consistency can really bring down the best of days.  Even the much needed boost it received as a diet fad appears to be quickly waning due to its general crappiness.

Now, researchers on the dime of beverage companies Asahi and Kagome have discovered that it can also bust up anyone’s party by reversing the effects of alcohol.

According to the study, subjects were examined drinking 100mL of alcohol chased with 480mL of tomato juice.  Then they repeated the experiment with a chaser of 480mL of water on the same people.

They found that when chasing with tomato juice the blood alcohol levels became 3 times lower than with the water.  On top of that, the test subject became completely sober 50 minutes faster with the tomato juice than the water.

A similar test was conducted using rats who were fed both water and a water with highly dissolved elements of tomato juice, because apparently even rats hate that red pulpy mess.  The results confirmed what they previously thought.

The researchers conclude that drinking tomato juice triggers enzymes in your liver on top of the ones normally activated when you drink. In layman’s terms, whenever something bad goes into your body like booze or pills, your liver sends out the little things to bust some heads throughout your body and clean shop.

However, when tomato juice, the most unholy of substances, is consumed your liver goes into overdrive.  This process inadvertently also clears up the fun intoxicants, in their furor to get at the tomato juice.

This is good news for anyone who needs to end the party quickly, but this research leaves me with a grimy feeling not unlike the one after drinking a glass of tomato juice.  First, this scientific breakthrough is suspiciously convenient for Asahi and Kagome who together are currently selling Tomate, a line of alcoholic carbonated tomato drinks.

Second, this report was done comparing tomato juice with water.  Sure, water is a good baseline to test something, but wouldn’t any other drink in the world (outside of more alcohol) help to speed up sobriety more than water?

This assumption is based on the fact that other drinks have various vitamins, minerals, sugars, and whatnot whereas water is just plain water.  A better study would pit tomato juice against some stalwart cures like black coffee, Gatorade, or milk.

Source: Mainichi (Japanese)