# Asians/Native Americans don't have an enzyme to digest alcohol? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [January 2, 2009, 5:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/asians-native-americans-dont-have-an-enzyme-to-digest-alcohol/479560 "2009-01-02T05:08:46Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![gitfiddle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/898d66/32.png) [@gitfiddle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gitfiddle)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2009, 5:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/asians-native-americans-dont-have-an-enzyme-to-digest-alcohol/479560/1 "2009-01-02T05:08:46Z")
We were having this discussion today. Someone said that most Asians don’t have a certain enzyme to digest alcohol. Is this true? If so, why? Haven’t there been alcohols in Asia for just as long as in the West? ---
**Author:** ![Tapioca\_Dextrin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Tapioca\_Dextrin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tapioca_Dextrin)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2009, 5:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/asians-native-americans-dont-have-an-enzyme-to-digest-alcohol/479560/2 "2009-01-02T05:23:50Z")
The enzyme in question is [alcohol dehydrogenase](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcohol_dehydrogenase#Humans). > [@](#): > > For example, populations from Europe have been found to express an allele for the alcohol dehydrogenase gene that makes it much more active than those found in populations from Asia or the Americas. This may be a correlating evolution with the rise of aldehyde dehydrogenase, which has been suggested as one of the more recognizable recent evolutionary changes in humans (along with lactose tolerance) - in order to make water safe in cities too dense to use springs, Europeans fermented alcoholic (and hence antiseptic) beverages, while Asians typically boiled their water (creating, among other things, tea). ---
**Author:** ![Uncle\_Brother\_Walker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/f08c70/32.png) [@Uncle\_Brother\_Walker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Uncle_Brother_Walker)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2009, 6:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/asians-native-americans-dont-have-an-enzyme-to-digest-alcohol/479560/3 "2009-01-02T06:20:25Z")
Damn! You beat me to it! My friends and I had this discussion a while back. One’s friend g/f is asian, and usually doesn’t have more than one or two drinks to be social. She admitted that she turns red after more than that and gets drunk very fast. They didn’t believe when I told them the answer, but a quick search on the net proved I was right. People were once again, rather than amazed at my knowledge, grumpy and upset about my arrogance for actually knowing it. ---
**Author:** ![even\_sven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dfb087/32.png) [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2009, 6:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/asians-native-americans-dont-have-an-enzyme-to-digest-alcohol/479560/4 "2009-01-02T06:37:05Z")
It’s not all Asians, and it seems like people can partially overcome it. But yeah, for a good chunk of people alcohol makes them turn beet red and get very drunk very quickly. ---
**Author:** ![TokyoBayer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tokyobayer/32/13989_2.png) [@TokyoBayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TokyoBayer)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2009, 12:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/asians-native-americans-dont-have-an-enzyme-to-digest-alcohol/479560/5 "2009-01-02T12:22:19Z")
From [here](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcohol_flush_reaction), discussing alcohol flush reaction. > [@](#): > > Approximately half of people of Asian descent are considered to be sensitive to alcohol due to this condition. [3] Flushing, after consuming one or two alcoholic beverages, includes a range of symptoms: nausea, headaches, light-headedness, an increased pulse, occasional extreme drowsiness, and occasional skin swelling and itchiness. These unpleasant side effects often prevent further drinking that may lead to further inebriation, but the symptoms can lead to mistaken assumption that the people affected are more easily inebriated than others. The degree of sensitivety to alcohol various in Asians. My wife and all of her family can’t drink. She gets red with a half a drink, and also gets sleepy. ---
**Author:** ![Lust4Life](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ecc23a/32.png) [@Lust4Life](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lust4Life)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2009, 2:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/asians-native-americans-dont-have-an-enzyme-to-digest-alcohol/479560/6 "2009-01-02T14:54:10Z")
I have no cite but saw on a T.V. documentary that early European settlers fell out with native Americans on one occassion when after a social get together the N.A.s returned home and became ill. They thought that they had been poisoned but apparently they had some sort of gluten/lactose intolerance and the Europeans had given them milk and bread. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2009, 3:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/asians-native-americans-dont-have-an-enzyme-to-digest-alcohol/479560/7 "2009-01-02T15:15:44Z")
Interesting. I’d never heard of this before. Can this be the answer to a question I posed quite a while ago on this Board – “Why didn’t native Americans develop wine?” ? I know about _pulque_ and other alcoholic beverages develop4ed in the Americas, but those were laboriously produced and used in small quantities, oten religious ones. Yet the North Americans had Labrusca grapes, and could easily have produced wine in large quantities – something the Europeans did right away (The Vikings named part of North America _Vinland_, although some have argued they were inspired by berries, not grapes. No matter – the colonists that came along six centuries later used the grapes for wine.) So why no native American Labrusca wine? Maybe alcohol dehydrogenase. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2009, 3:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/asians-native-americans-dont-have-an-enzyme-to-digest-alcohol/479560/8 "2009-01-02T15:28:51Z")
Or perhaps other environmental and social characteristics weren’t right for the development of wine. Perhaps they never juiced and stored fruits in such a way that might lead to fermentation. If fermentation happened, perhaps they never had a reason to try the “spoiled” food, because there was adequate supplies of fresh, uncontaminated water and fruits and vegetables. ---
**Author:** ![Chief\_Pedant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a6a055/32.png) [@Chief\_Pedant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chief_Pedant)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2009, 3:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/asians-native-americans-dont-have-an-enzyme-to-digest-alcohol/479560/9 "2009-01-02T15:50:36Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > Interesting. I’d never heard of this before. > > Can this be the answer to a question I posed quite a while ago on this Board – “Why didn’t native Americans develop wine?”… I wouldn’t think a propensity to become intoxicated faster is a reason for a population not figuring something out. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2009, 4:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/asians-native-americans-dont-have-an-enzyme-to-digest-alcohol/479560/10 "2009-01-02T16:11:22Z")
> [@](#): > > I wouldn’t think a propensity to become intoxicated faster is a reason for a population not figuring something out. > [@](#): > > Or perhaps other environmental and social characteristics weren’t right for the development of wine. Perhaps they never juiced and stored fruits in such a way that might lead to fermentation. If fermentation happened, perhaps they never had a reason to try the “spoiled” food, because there was adequate supplies of fresh, uncontaminated water and fruits and vegetables. Hard to believe that they never had an opportunity to find out – European and Asian cultures did. Fermented fruits and juices happen easily and naturally, and American Indians did keep things in pottery jars (and even watertight woven baskets). “Never had a reason to try “spoiled” foods because there were adequate supplies…”??? What sort of utopia do you think Americans lived in? They were subject to the same famines and occasional deprivations that everyone else was. They stored foods in caches underground as a hedge against this (the Pilgrims lived through their first winter because they found such troves.) Remember, we’re talking about huge numbers of people inhaviting an area for many thousands of years. It’s inconceivable to me that they wouldn’t have discovered alcohol many times over. The question is why they didn’t exploit this, as the Europeans did. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2009, 4:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/asians-native-americans-dont-have-an-enzyme-to-digest-alcohol/479560/11 "2009-01-02T16:18:28Z")
**Cal** , this is exactly the type of response I hoped my WAGging would stimulate. So, what else might be the reason? Were the effects of alcohol somehow not perceived as being pleasurable? That doesn’t make any sense, because alcohol use is prevalent among Native American populations today. A lot of them seem to be taking pleasure in its effects. What else? ---
**Author:** ![gitfiddle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/898d66/32.png) [@gitfiddle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gitfiddle)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2009, 4:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/asians-native-americans-dont-have-an-enzyme-to-digest-alcohol/479560/12 "2009-01-02T16:29:00Z")
This might sound strange, but does it have anything to do with the social instability in Europe as opposed to Asia. Asia was so much more advanced so much earlier than Europe, which leads me to think that maybe the facilities (i.e. access to clean drinking water) were more readily accessible. Whereas, in Europe, didn’t a lot of people drink alcohol because it was safer than water in a lot of places? (or was that just sailors?) What I’m getting at is, even though Asians had their various spirits, did they drink them as routinely as in Europe? I’m really interested in why this might have developed. By the way, as with all of the other mentions of red-faced Asian drinkers, my Taiwanese wife is exactly the same. Which is how the conversation got started, at a bar watching bowl games. ---
**Author:** ![gitfiddle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/898d66/32.png) [@gitfiddle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gitfiddle)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2009, 4:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/asians-native-americans-dont-have-an-enzyme-to-digest-alcohol/479560/13 "2009-01-02T16:31:47Z")
Also, is there a difference in the amount of time that it takes to prepare wines from grapes or wheat alcohols than it does to make wine from other fruits like plums or other starches like rice? Perhaps alcohol from grapes or barley are easier to make than alcohol from rice, for example, and thus can be drunk in greater quantities. ---
**Author:** ![gitfiddle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/898d66/32.png) [@gitfiddle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gitfiddle)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2009, 4:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/asians-native-americans-dont-have-an-enzyme-to-digest-alcohol/479560/14 "2009-01-02T16:39:21Z")
Yet, again, maybe it has to do with rice harvesting cultures. I heard Malcolm Gladwell talking recently about why Asians tend to have a much more strict study ethic than westerners. He was saying that since rice farming is a year-round job, wheat farming is more seasonal. So, in Europe, there was a sort of downtime that allowed for more carousal than rice farming would have. ---
**Author:** ![Chief\_Pedant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a6a055/32.png) [@Chief\_Pedant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chief_Pedant)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2009, 5:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/asians-native-americans-dont-have-an-enzyme-to-digest-alcohol/479560/15 "2009-01-02T17:54:12Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > Hard to believe that they never had an opportunity to find out – European and Asian cultures did. Fermented fruits and juices happen easily and naturally, and American Indians did keep things in pottery jars (and even watertight woven baskets). > > “Never had a reason to try “spoiled” foods because there were adequate supplies…”??? What sort of utopia do you think Americans lived in? They were subject to the same famines and occasional deprivations that everyone else was. They stored foods in caches underground as a hedge against this (the Pilgrims lived through their first winter because they found such troves.) > > Remember, we’re talking about huge numbers of people inhaviting an area for many thousands of years. It’s inconceivable to me that they wouldn’t have discovered alcohol many times over. The question is why they didn’t exploit this, as the Europeans did. Well, but is there not an enormous list of things that one population figured out but another did not? It’s not as if the whole process is something just lying there waiting to be discovered. There is a certain amount of 2+2=4 inolved, along with the capacity to operationalize the process and transfer the knowledge. As an example, did the Native Americans have the concept of yeast technology down? I am very ignorant about their diet, so I plan to go read up on it a bit. Nevertheless, my first reaction is “they couldn’t or didn’t figure out” rather than a proscription against intoxication as an explanation for their lack of Miller Lite. ---
**Author:** ![gitfiddle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/898d66/32.png) [@gitfiddle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gitfiddle)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2009, 6:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/asians-native-americans-dont-have-an-enzyme-to-digest-alcohol/479560/16 "2009-01-02T18:02:57Z")
> [@Chief\_Pedant](#): > > Well, but is there not an enormous list of things that one population figured out but another did not? It’s not as if the whole process is something just lying there waiting to be discovered. There is a certain amount of 2+2=4 inolved, along with the capacity to operationalize the process and transfer the knowledge. > > As an example, did the Native Americans have the concept of yeast technology down? I am very ignorant about their diet, so I plan to go read up on it a bit. Nevertheless, my first reaction is “they couldn’t or didn’t figure out” rather than a proscription against intoxication as an explanation for their lack of Miller Lite. If I remember correctly from the book _1491_, the Incans (I think) never developed a usable wheel, even though they had children’s toys with wheels. On the other hand, they had engineered a number of things that didn’t exist in the West. Again, IIRC, European priests called suspension bridges the work of the devil, because they could not figure out how a bridge could stay up without any supports. This is all to say that, it’s certainly imaginable that this concept extends into fields like yeast technology. ---
**Author:** ![Ferret\_Herder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e47774/32.png) [@Ferret\_Herder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ferret_Herder)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2009, 6:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/asians-native-americans-dont-have-an-enzyme-to-digest-alcohol/479560/17 "2009-01-02T18:45:38Z")
We need to be careful with the concept of “yeast technology” here, too. For thousands of years, people let wine/beer/sake/bread become naturally fermented via environmental yeasts and didn’t know it was something separate from the other ingredients that produced fermented products or rising bread. Commercially-available yeast wasn’t available until (at least, in the US) the late 1800s, and yeast was “added” via the natural airborne method until then. So it’s not really a matter of availability but rather, did these no- or low-alcohol cultures tend to leave fermentable materials out and available for this to happen? Did they gather honey and dilute it with water, and leave it in jugs? Mix ground barley or wheat with water as a beverage and leave it out? Juice grapes? ---
**Author:** ![SlowMindThinking](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/dc4da7/32.png) [@SlowMindThinking](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlowMindThinking)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2009, 7:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/asians-native-americans-dont-have-an-enzyme-to-digest-alcohol/479560/18 "2009-01-02T19:35:48Z")
> [@gitfiddle](#): > > This might sound strange, but does it have anything to do with the social instability in Europe as opposed to Asia. > > Asia was so much more advanced so much earlier than Europe, which leads me to think that maybe the facilities (i.e. access to clean drinking water) were more readily accessible. Whereas, in Europe, didn’t a lot of people drink alcohol because it was safer than water in a lot of places? (or was that just sailors?) > > What I’m getting at is, even though Asians had their various spirits, did they drink them as routinely as in Europe? I’m really interested in why this might have developed. > > By the way, as with all of the other mentions of red-faced Asian drinkers, my Taiwanese wife is exactly the same. Which is how the conversation got started, at a bar watching bowl games. I don’t understand this post. I assume in most of these posts, “Asian” really means east Asia. Since civilizations started in what is now the Mid-east and Egypt, and I’ve never heard of an inability to process alcohol as a Semitic condition, I don’t understand. At any rate, the relatively late advent of civilization to western Europe meant there water was probably cleaner there than in cities elsewhere. Certainly the Gauls drank long before the Romans showed up, so I doubt there is a tie in. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2009, 8:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/asians-native-americans-dont-have-an-enzyme-to-digest-alcohol/479560/19 "2009-01-02T20:24:13Z")
> [@SlowMindThinking](#): > > I don’t understand this post. I assume in most of these posts, “Asian” really means east Asia. Since civilizations started in what is now the Mid-east and Egypt, and I’ve never heard of an inability to process alcohol as a Semitic condition, I don’t understand. At any rate, the relatively late advent of civilization to western Europe meant there water was probably cleaner there than in cities elsewhere. Certainly the Gauls drank long before the Romans showed up, so I doubt there is a tie in. I’m not sure what you’re getting at here. Civilization started fairly early in China and the Indus Valley too. What would the Semitic relationship to alcohol have to to with anything that happened there? ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2009, 9:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/asians-native-americans-dont-have-an-enzyme-to-digest-alcohol/479560/20 "2009-01-02T21:04:44Z")
> [@](#): > > Well, but is there not an enormous list of things that one population figured out but another did not? It’s not as if the whole process is something just lying there waiting to be discovered. There is a certain amount of 2+2=4 inolved, along with the capacity to operationalize the process and transfer the knowledge. But fermentation is so simple that bears and various types of birds have figured it out – they eat the fermented fruits and get drunk. For people who are already storing food for long periods, fermentation is inevitably going to happen. This is virtually a no-brainer. It’s not as if we’re talking about developing a returning boomerang. We’re also talking about a common set of operation indulged in by millions of people over many thousands of years. There is absolutely no way that native Americans did not hit upon the idea of fermented liquids, many times over, in many places. And labrisca grapes ferment as easily and rapidly as European vinifera grapes. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/asians-native-americans-dont-have-an-enzyme-to-digest-alcohol/479560.md?page=2)