In Florida, researchers from The Scripps Research Institute Florida campus studied fruit flies behavior to figure out why we get that sleepy feeling after eating certain foods. While we’ve all heard about tryptophan in turkey making us sleepy at the Thanksgiving table, researchers found that what actually affects more than anything in making us get a food coma is the amount of food we eat. The more we eat, the sleepier we get. When giving the fruit flies high protein, high salt and high sugar foods, they found the high sugar foods increased the fruit flies activity, while the high protein and high salt foods decreased their activity and caused them to sleep longer than normal. So want to stay awake at the Thanksgiving table? Learn from the fruit flies and don’t overeat and lay low on the protein and salt.
