This Is Your Body on Turkey, and Why Thanksgiving Makes People Sleepy

This Is Your Body on Turkey, and Why Thanksgiving Makes People Sleepy

Thanksgiving is fast approaching, meaning it’s time to put away those jeans for the weekend, and bust out your comfiest, loose, eating pants.

There’ll be all the classics – mashed potatoes, gravy, cranberry sauce, stuffing. And of course, the star of the meal (besides the cook): that ginormous turkey which will be demolished by family and relatives.

But did you know eating turkey—and especially overeating turkey—has some very real biological effects?

Everyone’s heard of the ‘turkey makes you sleepy’ cliché, though that’s not all that’s happening to your body when you binge on the bird (and not entirely accurate, either).

Matthew Hartings, an assistant professor of chemistry at American University, breaks down all the things that happen inside our bodies when we feast, courtesy of TIME:

Photo credit: fizkes/Shutterstock

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