Aunt Rowena and Food Comas

Published November 27, 2007

By Julia Taddonio

You’re exhausted. You’re sitting in the car with that weird girl you carpool with from your hometown, trying to make it back to Burlington before dark. Or better yet you’re sitting in a narrow airplane seat (but be grateful it’s a window seat!) Chances are the plane’s been chilling for the past forty minutes “due to a higher than usual congested runway,” and it’ll be another thirty minutes before it budges an inch.

So you curse Delta, and you curse yourself as you try to get comfortable in an uncomfortable chair, and undo the top button of your pants because they haven’t fit quite the same since Thanksgiving dinner. You lean your cheek against the chilly window and you wish you were wearing sweatpants- that you hadn’t over-indulged during Thanksgiving and dominated the garlic mashed potatoes all through dinner, and during desert, and again during after-dinner coffee.

The thought of that perfect blend of potatoey, garlicky, buttery goodness brings you back to the day itself, and what a day it was! Aunt Rowena wouldn’t shut up and kept talking to your cats in a ridiculous baby voice. She thinks that even though you’re twenty-one years old you should still address her using the “Aunt” title, like you’re not trying to forget you’re related to her as often as possible. Bob, her quiet and trembling sort of husband, your uncle, spent the meal clasping and unclasping his hands together as if he were about to speak, but never did. Grandpa was snoring by the time your mom and sister cleared the first course soup bowls, and continued to snore his way through salad, the main course, and dessert. Everyone else ate and drank and the conversations were cliquey as ever and mostly between two people.

When you were between two pairs of conversation, yeah you were excluded. You’d awkwardly look around, noticed you weren’t the only one in this situation, but your brother was miles away on the other side of the table. Not that you really cared but you were caught between your aunt and her fawn-like husband. You thought to yourself, “Why the hell does Mom always get to seat everyone?”

After piling serving after serving of veggies, turkey, and the divine mashed potatoes and making gravy soup out of your large dinner plate, that feeling of fatigue set in. Could it have been that you were tired from being with the family for more than five minutes, or the pre-dinner cocktails you downed before everyone arrived? Could it be the plethora of mashed potatoes you consumed in record time? Or maybe it was the turkey. Turkey is usually the one at fault, or at least the one who is blamed for this type of “food coma,” due to the amount of L-tryptophan it contains. Did you know that L-tryptophan is an amino acid and a precursor of serotonin, which gives it a sedative effect?

Dr. Billy Goldberg, author of Why do Men have Nipples? reports that although this amino acid is found in turkey protein, it is actually found in plants and animals, such as chicken and cows, meaning a big hearty bacon cheeseburger, or taking advantage of the free wings at RJ’s could also cause this drowsiness. He also states that “Two other factors that contribute to the desire to sleep at the dinner table are meal composition and increased blood flow to the gastrointestinal tract. Studies have shown that a solid-food meal resulted in faster fatigue onset than a liquid diet. The solid-food meal also causes a variety of substances to jump into action that ultimately leads to increased blood-flow to the abdomen. This increase in blood flow and an increase in the metabolic rate for digestion can contribute to the coma.”

So as you near exit 14W off the interstate, or your flight’s finally underway, ignore the chain-smoking creeper who won’t go above 60mph or the drooling, murmuring baby next to you and let’s make a little bet. Blame it on the turkey, blame it on the booze, but I’ll still put money on it that it was the garlic mashed potatoes that got you.

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