Chris Masterjohn

Yeah, that's right.

Well, I just want to tell Public Health Message that you did not get sleepy because the turkey was high in tryptophan.

Yeah, that's weird.

I mean, the weirdest thing is the origins of it.

Apparently, it came from researchers in the—I'm sorry, not researchers, journalists in the 80s who were trying to come up with a reason to explain why everyone was tired after Thanksgiving meal.

And they just looked as far as, oh, turkey has tryptophan, which is an amino acid that is the precursor to melatonin, which is, you know, you could call it a sleeping chemical.

It's what makes you get tired at night.

That must be why.

But it turns out that, A, turkey's not that high in tryptophan.

Like, even whey protein is higher in tryptophan than turkey is.

And then, B, tryptophan doesn't make you tired.

Yeah, I dare anyone to go out and have just a slice of turkey for breakfast and see if it knocks you out.

Yeah, I mean, it's not good.

And if you look at a lion in the wild, one thing that you'll notice is that

They are on the prowl when they are hungry.

They're alert, their bodies revved up, and then they have a feast and they just fall asleep.

And the reason is that we're, you know, you even see this in physiology.

They call the parasympathetic nervous system the rest and digest system.

And that's because we are biologically wired to be alert when we need to work to get our food.

And then we're wired to, you know, eat that food, feel like we've gotten our fill, we've done what we need to do, and now we can rest and take a sleep.