The Thanksgiving turkey is America’s most celebrated culinary tradition. Whether deep-fried, grilled, or slow-roasted, the turkey serves as the centerpiece of easily the most gluttonous day of the calendar year. So beware, all ye who stuff your faces with as much poultry as humanly possible this coming Thursday: you just might find yourself coming down with a case of the meat sweats.

Not sure what we’re talking about? Let us explain.

A variation on the food coma, the meat sweats are an as-of-yet medically unsubstantiated phenomenon in which, after eating a ridiculous amount of animal flesh, one’s body is overtaken by a severe bout of protein-based perspiration. Additionally, an intense—though temporary, thank heavens—aversion to all meat and meat-related products has been reported by those suffering the condition.

Despite being pretty unpleasant, the sweats are a point of pride among those that find validation in their capacity for consumption, a sure sign that one has lived up to his meaty mealtime potential. But since there isn’t even any scientific validation for the sweats’ very existence, the question remains: what exactly are the meat sweats?

There are a few theories out there. The most widely accepted has to do with something called the thermic effect of food, which the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition defines as “the increase in metabolic rate after ingestion of a meal.” Or, to put it more simply: every time you eat, your body must expend some energy to break down the food you’ve just swallowed. By doing so it releases heat, ever-so-slightly increasing your core body temperature. Usually though, the change is negligible.

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The thing is, depending on what you’ve eaten, the amount of energy your body has to use to process it can vary pretty substantially. For example, fats are the easiest to digest, meaning that their effect on your internal thermometer is pretty minimal. Proteins, on the other hand, are the most difficult, forcing your body to exhaust three to seven times more calories in order to take them in. Likewise, the supposed premise behind the meat sweats is this: by ingesting an abnormal abundance of protein, your gut would have to burn a ridiculous amount of energy on digestion. This, in turn, would raise your core temperature by such a significant margin that your body would have to resort to sweating—usually reserved for fevers and vigorous exercise—just to get it back down to normal.

But is there any evidence that this is actually what's going on? Well, yes and no. While there's never been a study to prove its correlation to the sweats, scientists studying the thermic effect have noticed a phenomenon called "protein-induced thermogenesis"—that is, a measurable increase in the metabolic rate of those who regularly eat a high-protein diet. So, it's possible (though again, not proven) that if someone with a regular diet should eat an incredibly protein-rich meal, their metabolism might react accordingly and leave them sweating up a storm. Maybe.

Again, though, that's just the leading theory—others do exist, citing the salt and nitrates in meat as the culprit, but they have even less proof than the above. So, if we were to go out on a limb and presume that the thermic effect is to blame, is there anything a person can you do to keep the meat sweats to a minimum? Unfortunately, we've only got one answer: eat less meat. And since we all know that’s not going to happen, it's probably best to accept your fate now.

And maybe invest in an undershirt.

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