The Truth About Food Comas

Thanksgiving is about two things, giving thanks while surrounded with loved ones and food.

Turkey, stuffing, and pumpkin pie is likely to be high on the agenda. After enjoying a wonderful feast, many people will be either dozing in front of the television or hit straight to bed with no intention of moving for the rest of the day. Commonly known as "food coma," a new research sheds light precisely what causes this food-related fatigue.

The average American consumes more than 4,500 calories and 229 grams of fat on Thanksgiving Day, according to the Calorie Control Council.

According to Medical News Today (MNT), web-based outlet for medical news, a typical Thanksgiving meal can contain around 3,000 calories alone, excluding celebratory drinks and appetizers throughout the day which easily adds a further 1,500 calories.

While some people are able to cope with this overindulgence, for others, it will result in extreme fatigue, followed by an unintentional nap

According to MNT, a new study that is published in the journal eLife, researchers from The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) in Florida point to other possible causes of the so-called food coma: protein and salt.

Leader of the study, William Ja, of the Department of Neuroscience and the Department of Metabolism and Aging at TSRI, and his colleagues studied the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster.

According to BBC News, these fruit flies share more than 60 percent of their DNA with humans and studies have shown that they share around 75 percent of human disease genes. This makes the fruit flies ideal for scientific research.

Ja and team created a system called the Activity Recording CAFE (ARC), which allowed them to measure fruit fly activity before and after eating.

According to MNT, the ARC system revealed that the fruit flies slept more after eating a large meal, sleeping for around 20-40 minutes, a similar reaction that happens to humans as well. Ja and his researchers also found that the more food the fruit flies ate, the more they slept.

Further into the investigation, the researchers found that the increased need for sleep was driven by intake of protein and salt, while sugar intake had no impact.

"The protein link to post-meal sleep has been mostly anecdotal, too, so to have it turn up in the study was remarkable," says Ja, according to MNT. "In humans, high sugar consumption provides a quick boost to blood glucose followed by a crash, so its effect on sleep might only be observed beyond the 20-40 minute food coma window."

Previous studies have suggested that nerve cells, called leucokinin neutrons (Lk) play a role in how much of a meal we want to consume, which indicates that Lk neurons react quickly while people eat to alter feeding behavior.

Ja and his researchers overall believe their ARC model provides some insight into why people feel a little more sluggish after that Thanksgiving Day meal. Also, it provides a starting point for future studies aimed at uncovering the exact genes that enable meal size. If you want to avoid the "food coma" that comes with Thanksgiving, you may want to rethink your menu.