My father can’t stand poultry or most seafood, and as a United Methodist minister he’s taken a lot of kidding about the fact that fried chicken is the number one food at most church potlucks.
Anyway, he’s also a terrific cook, and I’m always amazed at the fact that a man who hates turkey cooks our Thanksgiving turkey every year — and it’s absolutely terrific. He outdid himself this year, with a huge 24-pound bird cooked to perfection — fully cooked, but tender and juicy and full of flavor.
Back at the apartment tonight, I found myself watching an episode of “Food Detectives” on Food Network, hosted by former “Queer Eye” star and frequent Iron Chef America judge Ted Allen. I didn’t like this show when it first started — I thought it was too silly and derivative, and the first episode was especially derivative, since just about every topic it included had already been covered by either “Good Eats” or “Mythbusters.” But I’ve warmed to the show somewhat.
Tonight’s episode, appropriately enough, included a look at the supposed role of tryptophan from turkey in our post-Thanksgiving-dinner stupor. They actually did a sleep study with five participants. One ate a large meal including turkey, one a large meal without turkey, one a small meal including turkey, one a small meal without turkey, and one a turkey leg and nothing else.
What they demonstrated was that tryptophan’s sedative effect is limited — it works to some extent if you consume only tryptophan-rich foods, but not if you eat turkey in combination with tryptophan-poor foods, which is what most of us did today. The sleepiness that we blame on tryptophan is actually due to good old fashioned overeating. Both of the people who ate the huge meals — one with turkey, one without — slept more deeply, while both of the people who ate light meals had no change in their sleep patterns.
I also didn’t realize that pumpkin pie, another Thanksgiving staple (though not in our household), is also rich in tryptophan.