This little chocolate pleasure comes back every year at the holidays but you must not forget that it contains alcohol. Beyond a certain number, it is possible to be positive in an alcohol test because of these delicacies. How much exactly? It varies whether you are a woman or a man.
Many refuse to ignore this sweetness but you must remain vigilant because of its alcohol content. Because under its crunchy shell, this mouthful hides cherry liqueur. Its consumption therefore necessarily increases the alcohol level in the blood. But then, can you really be drunk while eating MonChéri? And from how many chocolates does the test become positive? To understand, you have to look at the recipe more closely: a Mon Chéri is 49% dark chocolate, 18% fruit and above all 13% liqueur. While the precise alcohol level is not written on the box, the manufacturer told Slate that there is approximately 8 ml of alcohol per 100 g. As a chocolate weighs 10.5 g, we remember that a single bite represents approximately 0.8 ml of pure alcohol.
Since alcohol is lighter than water, one Mon Chéri (0.8 ml of alcohol) actually contains 0.64 grams of pure alcohol. Once ingested, this alcohol is diluted in the body’s water. However, we are not all equal when it comes to this diffusion: women’s bodies physiologically contain less water than men’s, alcohol is therefore more concentrated there. Concretely, a 60 kg woman will display around 0.017 g of alcohol per liter of blood when eating a MonChéri chocolate, compared to around 0.011 g/L for an 80 kg man. In France, the blood alcohol limit authorized for driving is 0.5 grams of pure alcohol per liter of blood. Thus, a woman must eat nearly 30 MonChéri to reach the legal threshold while a man, 45. That’s a lot.
You must therefore eat a large number of MonChéri to be positive for alcohol, and especially eat them almost in a row since alcohol begins to be eliminated as soon as it enters the blood. Furthermore, we do not all have the same tolerance to alcohol: the feeling of drunkenness varies depending on weight, age or even gender. So it seems much more likely to suffer a liver attack from wolfing down the whole box of chocolates, rather than being so drunk that you can’t get behind the wheel.
However, caution is still required for sensitive people. Although the risk of exceeding the legal threshold during a roadside check is statistically low for a healthy adult, vigilance is essential for certain categories of people. For pregnant women, people on medication incompatible with ethanol or people in withdrawal, the precautionary principle prevails: even a tiny quantity of liquor can have a physiological or psychological impact.
Finally, remember that alcohol, even in small doses, can interact with fatigue, impairing your reflexes well before reaching the legal limit of 0.5 g/L. Beyond the blood alcohol test, it is the caloric intake which must call for moderation: with around 46 kcal per mouthful and a high sugar content, the MonChéri box remains a pleasure to be enjoyed sparingly to preserve its glycemic balance.
