Important Thanksgiving Facts

Found in Mental Floss here:
http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/20151

by Matt Soniak - November 27, 2008 - 10:00 AM

Why does turkey make me tired?

Most people blame tryptophan, but that’s not really the main culprit. In case you’re wondering, tryptophan is an amino acid that the body uses in the processes of making vitamin B3 and serotonin, a neurotransmitter that helps regulate sleep. It can’t be produced by our bodies, so we need to get it through our diet. From which foods, exactly? Turkey, of course, but also other meats, chocolate, bananas, mangoes, dairy products, eggs, chickpeas, peanuts and a slew of other foods. Some of these, like cheddar cheese, have more tryptophan per gram than turkey. Tryptophan doesn’t have much of an impact unless it’s taken on an empty stomach and in an amount larger than what we’re getting from our drumstick. So why does turkey get the rap as a one-way ticket to a nap?

The urge to snooze is more the fault of the average Thanksgiving meal and all the food and booze that go with it. Here are a few things that play into the nap factor:
Fats – That turkey skin is delicious, but fats take a lot of energy to digest, so the body redirects blood to the digestive system. Reduced blood flow in the rest of the body means reduced energy.

Alcohol – What Homer Simpson called the cause of—and solution to—all of life’s problems is also a central nervous system depressant.

Overeating – Same deal as fats. It takes a lot of energy to digest a big feast (the average Thanksgiving meal contains 3,000 calories and 229 grams of fat), so blood is sent to the digestive process system, leaving the brain a little tired.

Why is dark meat dark and white meat white?

Among the many things inside our bodies (guts, black stuff, about fifty Slim Jims), there are two types of muscle fiber: fast twitch and slow twitch. Fast twitch muscle fibers, which contract quickly but consume a lot of energy and fatigue quickly, are used for rapid movements like jumping and sprinting. Slow twitch muscle fibers contract slowly but don’t use much energy, and can contract for a long time before fatiguing; they’re used for endurance activities.

Most of our muscles are made up of a mix of both slow and fast twitch fibers and, overall, the average human body has about a 50/50 mix of the two. Some people may have a higher percentage of one type or the other from developing those fibers through training and exercise. Some Olympic sprinters have as much as 80% fast twitch fibers and long-distance runners have the same percentage of slow-twitch. Ongoing research says that training can only alter the ratio so much, though. It seems that there’s a genetic predisposition for having more of one fiber than another. But let’s talk turkey.

The meat we eat from a turkey is turkey muscle, and turkeys have fast and slow twitch muscle fibers, too—though not in the same even mixing we see in humans. The difference between dark meat and white meat is due to the type of muscle fiber that’s predominant in the meat and the way that fiber makes energy.

The muscles in turkey legs – the dark meat from the thighs and drumsticks – are mainly made up of slow twitch fibers, which get their energy from oxygen stored in the fibers by a protein called myoglobin. Myoglobin is a richly pigmented protein, and the more myoglobin there is in the fibers, the darker the meat.

Turkey wings and breasts, the white meat, are mostly made up of fast twitch muscle fibers, which get their energy from glycogen, a polysaccharide of glucose that’s stored in the muscle fibers and doesn’t have much pigment.

If you’ve eaten duck breast, you know that it’s hardly what you’d call white meat. That’s because unlike flightless turkeys, ducks take to the air a lot and have more slow twitch fibers, and more myoglobin, in their wings and breasts.

Thanksgiving by the Numbers
Before we all find a comfortable spot on the couch to curl up in, let’s crunch some big numbers that go along with the big meal.

271 million -
The estimated number of turkeys raised in the US this year. Of those, 49 million were raised in Minnesota, the leading turkey production state for the year.

$4.3 billion –
The estimated amount that farmers will make from the sale of all those turkeys.


689 million pounds –
The estimate for US cranberry production this year. Wisconsin comes out on top with 385 million pounds produced.

1.8 billion pounds –
The total weight of sweet potatoes produced by the major sweet potato producing states last year.

1.1 billion pounds –
The total weight of the pumpkins produced last year by major pumpkin-producing states, with a value of $117 million. Illinois wiped the floor with the rest of the states’ pumpkin patches and led the country with 542 million pounds worth of gourd.

177 million pounds –
The tart cherry production for 2008, if pumpkin pie isn’t your thing.

13.3 pounds –
The amount of turkey that the average American ate in 2006.

(If you’re a numbers geek, these figures came from the USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service, the USDA Economic Research Service and the Census Bureau, all of which have plenty of other fun stats to play with.)

Questioning Thanksgiving

From Young Anabaptist Radicals:

Thanksgiving makes me nervous.

For years, I’ve gotten a sinking feeling in my stomach as the month of November draws to a close and this day looms. On the one hand, Thanksgiving is about joy and gratitude. It is a time when I travel to see family and friends, welcome a few days of rest and look forward to the holiday season. In my mind, I know it is a good thing to have a day where the sole emphasis is to give thanks to God for all God has done. I also appreciate the opportunity to celebrate all my loved ones do and are to one another.

And yet Thanksgiving reminds me of a beautiful but altogether itchy sweater. Sure it looks good on the rack in my closet. It is slimming, well-made, gorgeous color—everything you could hope for in a sweater. But if I put it on I’m guaranteed to spend the whole day tugging, scratching and feeling downright uncomfortable. Try as I might, I can’t shake that weird feeling about that good ole holiday. It gets to the point where weeks in advance I’m trying to come up with other things to say besides “Happy Thanksgiving.” And since “Happy Day Off” doesn’t cut it I go ahead and mutter the greeting anyway, wheels still turning for a suitable substitute.

I guess the trouble with Thanksgiving for me begins with the history of the indigenous people who were here long before America was even an idea. It is a day that celebrates the gift of food the Wampanoag gave to the Pilgrims as they suffered from disease and hunger. It celebrates how this native tribe who had already experienced raids and slavery at the hands of the Europeans nevertheless taught these foreigners the skills necessary to grow their food and survive. And yet inextricably linked to this now mythical tale are years and years of treachery, racism and violence, blessed by Christian language no less, against millions of indigenous people. Small pox blankets, “civilizing” schools, broken treaties…they are bound together with our Thanksgiving celebration no matter how we try to reinterpret the day’s meaning and baptize it with new Christian language and metaphors.

Becoming vegetarian and now vegan just ratchets up my Thanksgiving sweater’s itchiness. The thought of all those living, breathing turkeys—beings that experience suffering and pain, that long for sunlight, that understand in their own primitive ways what it means to be free—locked down in darkness (or penned on their “free range” farms) awaiting slaughter is hard to bear. Through no fault of their own, these creatures who had the unfortunate luck of being born into a less advanced (and less violent) species, are mutilated, abused and butchered so people can serve their burnt flesh on a platter and gorge on their bodies. What does it mean to say “thanks” to God for our food given the conditions these creatures endure? How can this be a “happy” meal when all of this unnecessary killing is done for no other reason than we like turkey flesh and we can wield power as we will?

Perhaps the trouble with Thanksgiving for me is that there is a whole lot of thanks but not a lot of repentance. There’s a whole lot of “grace” but not enough confession. At the very least it would be nice if more people saw the complexity and contradictions of the day. Rather than giving into the myth, getting sucked into the television set and going about their business as usual, it would be nice to know that other people were feeling a bit itchy about the whole dang thing too.

At the very least, that might make me feel a little less nervous.

– Nekeisha Alexis-Baker. Information on the origins of Thanksgiving gleaned from Jacqueline Keeler’s essay “Thanksgiving: A Native American View” available on Alternet at http://www.alternet.org/story/4391/