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Green New Year's: Getting Techie
What's the difference between champagne and sparkling wine?
It sounds like they'd be interchangeable, but sparkling wine and champagne aren't always the same thing. Champagne is a very specific kind of sparkling wine, made only in France's Champagne region. In many countries—but not all—use of the name Champagne is controlled; in Europe, for example, it's limited to wines from Champagne, but in the U.S., it's also permitted on some domestic bottles. Remember, depending on where you live, wines imported from Europe actually have a smaller carbon footprint than some produced here in the States.
Why do we get hangovers?
Ringing in the new year with a glass (or six) of wine is fun—but the hangover the next morning definitely isn't. You may find yourself with headaches, nausea, trembling, dehydration, and a bunch of other after-affects that we won't even get into. Here's why: drinking stops your brain from producing vasopressin, the hormone that tells your kidneys to reabsorb water, so your kidneys expel it instead; this dehydration lowers your levels of salt and potassium (hello, headaches, fatigue, and nausea). Light or clear liquors (like rum and gin) have fewer fermentation byproducts than dark liquor or red wine, so those hangovers are often not as severe—and since organic wines and champagnes don't have the same chemical impurities as conventionally-produced brands, some greenies swear the hangovers are not as bad (or even non-existent).
Where do New Year's resolutions come from?
Making resolutions to behave better in the new year is a tradition that goes as far back as the Babylonians, who celebrated their new year on the first day of spring-though even before that, ancient Romans got their fresh start by asking peers for forgiveness for the sins of the past year. These days, promising yourself that you'll give up junk food, get back to the gym, or find a new job is easy after the month-long indulgence that comes between Thanksgiving and Christmas—but keeping them is much more difficult (which has turned the breaking of resolutions into a tradition of its own).
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