Sleepy Tryptophan effect is a Thanksgiving myth!

Most people will not read this post in time to help this Thanksgiving, but hopefully it will come in handy for next Thanksgiving and future poultry dinners to come.

The tryptophan effect is a myth.

That's right. Every Thanksgiving after the big meal I hear family members complain that the tryptophan is kicking in as they feel a sudden sleepiness.

Tryptophan is an amino acid that is in turkey and does cause sleepiness. However, there is not enough tryptophan in turkey to cause sleepiness - and even if there was - the tryptophan would only kick in on an empty stomach with no protien present. Not likely at Thanksgiving dinner.

How do I know all this? I read it on Snopes.com.

Perhaps a fun activity for the next be family dinner would be to gather around the computer or pull out the laptops and play Snopes.com bingo.

How to play:

1. Place each of the interesting "facts," that came up during dinner conversation onto a bingo grid.

2. Look up these points on Snopes and cross out any that are false.

3. First person to make bingo wins the wishbone. 

• ‹ previous
• 383 of 1431
• next ›