Turkey Day Musings
(All: Rick sent this on the 28th - My Internet was down for a week. Sorry. C-) )
Doesn't turkey contain tryptophan? I think that is the reason you feel sleepy after eating it, though I am curious why any animal (maybe quite a few do?) would have evolved to produce a chemical like that in its muscle tissue (why doesn't it make the turkey sleepy?). I supposed if you apply a predator-prey survival hypothesis to the problem, it would tend to make predators go to sleep after eating a turkey, thus helping the rest of the flock to survive. It would just suck to be that particular turkey, though. It also raises a Darwinian issue of hereditary evolution, because the turkeys that have developed that adaptation have to die in order to utilize it, thus eliminating them from the gene-pool. The long-term effect of this, according to Darwin anyway, would be that fewer and fewer turkeys would have this chemical trait to pass on to their progeny, and eventually, that trait would disappear entirely. So, if you apply this twisted logic to the issue, turkeys are evolutionarily adapted to sacrifice themselves to insure the survival of the species, and in some way, I am just doing my part by eating them.
Speaking of eating, we got a turkey leg for lunch that looked like it came from a pterodactyl (hey, I spelled it right!). It was about 10 inches long, and the leg bone was as thick as my thumb. I think it may have actually been an emu leg. It was over-cooked, and it looked like the poor bastard had been hit by a bus. The leg bone was shattered, and the bone was sticking out of the meat in about four different directions. But we had a piece of turkey-ham, so I just made a sandwich instead. We also had chocolate ice cream(!) and a very small sliver of pumpkin pie. For some silly reason, when I got just a little chocolate ice cream on my pumpkin pie, it made it taste a lot like peanut butter. Very strange. I am sure I discovered a hitherto unknown chemical process.
Doesn't turkey contain tryptophan? I think that is the reason you feel sleepy after eating it, though I am curious why any animal (maybe quite a few do?) would have evolved to produce a chemical like that in its muscle tissue (why doesn't it make the turkey sleepy?). I supposed if you apply a predator-prey survival hypothesis to the problem, it would tend to make predators go to sleep after eating a turkey, thus helping the rest of the flock to survive. It would just suck to be that particular turkey, though. It also raises a Darwinian issue of hereditary evolution, because the turkeys that have developed that adaptation have to die in order to utilize it, thus eliminating them from the gene-pool. The long-term effect of this, according to Darwin anyway, would be that fewer and fewer turkeys would have this chemical trait to pass on to their progeny, and eventually, that trait would disappear entirely. So, if you apply this twisted logic to the issue, turkeys are evolutionarily adapted to sacrifice themselves to insure the survival of the species, and in some way, I am just doing my part by eating them.
Speaking of eating, we got a turkey leg for lunch that looked like it came from a pterodactyl (hey, I spelled it right!). It was about 10 inches long, and the leg bone was as thick as my thumb. I think it may have actually been an emu leg. It was over-cooked, and it looked like the poor bastard had been hit by a bus. The leg bone was shattered, and the bone was sticking out of the meat in about four different directions. But we had a piece of turkey-ham, so I just made a sandwich instead. We also had chocolate ice cream(!) and a very small sliver of pumpkin pie. For some silly reason, when I got just a little chocolate ice cream on my pumpkin pie, it made it taste a lot like peanut butter. Very strange. I am sure I discovered a hitherto unknown chemical process.
posted by Christopher Willis at 6:50 PM
1 Comments:
Hey Rick!
Keep trying to send some email. I am trying to see if there is a filter problem.
Thanks.
Chad
Post a Comment
<< Home