Q: Is it safe for children to eat food that has been prepared with wine or other alcoholic beverages?—Jerry
A: Lots of foods served during the holiday season are made with alcohol, especially desserts. In fact, a lot of people don't realize that vanilla extract is 35 percent alcohol—that's the same proof as Captain Morgan rum! And the old adage that the alcohol "burns off" when the food is cooked is only true to a degree: Depending on how much alcohol is used, how it's cooked and the length of time it's cooked, some alcohol will remain.
Is that remaining amount of alcohol safe for kids to consume? Some cultures don't blink an eye at letting adolescents take a sip of wine, but Dr. Jasmin Roman, a general practitioner in New York, suggests that we shouldn't assume even small amounts of alcohol are safe for kids. "There is no specific amount of ethanol (alcohol) that is considered safe for children," she says. "Interestingly, this is being evaluated not just in foods cooked with alcohol, but also in other household items containing alcohol, such as mouthwash or homeopathic medicines. Various factors are at play in ethanol metabolism, most important age and body weight. The concerns are not just for acute intoxication and overdose, but also neurophysiological risks that can come with lesser amounts of alcohol—sleep disturbances, confusion, unsteady walking, for example."
"The only way to be 100 percent safe is to avoid cooking [food for children] with alcohol," says Dr. Roman.
