Thanksgiving: Trouble with Turkeys and Tryptophan

Some years back, Scientific American came up with a nice piece: Does Turkey Make You Sleepy? The author, Coco Ballantyne, pointed the finger at Tryptophan (C11H12N2O2), an amino acid present in turkey meat. 
The short answer is “No,” but the article takes a nice tour through Thanksgiving food and drink, including references to the blood-brain barrier and the impact of “scarfing down enormous quantities of food.”
According to Wikipedia, humans and many animals cannot synthesize Tryptophan, which for us makes it an essential amino acid – so don’t feel bad about the scarfing.

Read all about it: Scientific American