Some claim that eating a meat-heavy dinner causes excessive perspiration. Is this, however, founded on fact or fiction?
Q: I've heard that eating too much meat in one sitting might cause you to break out in a sweat, a condition known as "meat sweats." Is this something real?
The notion that eating a meat-heavy dinner can cause excessive sweating has been around for decades. Although it is unclear when and when the term was developed, it became popular in a 2001 episode of "Friends," when the character Joey Tribbiani ate an entire turkey, wiped his brow, and exclaimed, "Here come the meat sweats." In June 2022, Arby's partnered with Old Spice to sell a "Meat Sweat Defense" kit that includes a special roast beef sweatsuit, gym towel, sweatband, and a container of deodorant spray.
Is this brilliant marketing, or will eating too many roast beef sandwiches make you sweat like you just ran a marathon?
According to research, eating protein raises body temperature more than carbohydrates or lipids. However, there is little evidence that this rise is big enough to cause sweating, according to Donald Layman, an emeritus professor of food science and human nutrition at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign who studies protein metabolism. As a result, the occurrence may be rooted in myth rather than actuality. Here's what we know so far.
Protein helps to warm the body.
Some evidence suggests that protein-rich meals increase (body) heat, albeit most studies on the subject are minor and date back decades. Researchers at Arizona State University, for example, asked 10 young women to consume either high-protein or high-carbohydrate meals for one day while taking different measurements, including body temperature, in a landmark study published in 2002. The women returned to the lab four or eight weeks later and ate the alternative meal option. After eating the more protein-heavy meal, the women's body temperatures were over 60% higher on average than after eating the carbohydrate-rich dinner. Other modest investigations have revealed that men experience the same phenomenon.
Protein raises body temperature because it requires more work — that is, more energy — to digest, and this activity generates heat, according to Marie-Pierre St-Onge, an associate professor of nutritional medicine at Columbia University's Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons.
This is due in part to the fact that protein is more difficult to digest than carbohydrates or fats. Protein digestion is "energetically expensive," according to Stuart Phillips, a kinesiologist and head of McMaster University's McMaster Centre for Nutrition, Exercise, and Health Research in Hamilton, Ontario.
Our bodies employ the proteins we eat to make new proteins, which generate heat, according to Dr. Layman.
When you consume at least 30 grams of protein, for example, your body begins to produce its own muscle proteins, which "is a high energy demanding operation," according to Dr. Layman. "That will boost heat expenditure in the body," which means you will feel overheated.
Because the body uses so much of the energy from high-protein meals, a person burns three to four times as many calories after eating protein as they do after eating carbohydrates or fat, according to Dr. Layman. In one tiny study published in 1999, researchers discovered that when eight women followed a high-protein diet for one day, they burnt 87 more calories than when they followed a high-fat diet.
One theory, supported by scant evidence, holds that we are warmed more by meals we enjoy than by those we don't. In a tiny 1985 trial, eight women were given either a delicious lunch of cheese fondue, spaghetti with meatballs, a chocolate éclair, and a Coke, or the same ingredients combined and shaped into a flavorless, dry biscuit. The following day, the women switched and ate the opposite dinner. The researchers discovered that the women's bodies released around half as much heat after eating the bland biscuit as they did after eating the sumptuous feast. This study, however, does not appear to have been reproduced afterward.
Meat sweats, on the other hand, maybe a stretch.
Although protein warms the body, scientists are skeptical that eating a lot of meat — no matter how delicious — will induce a person to sweat much, if at all.
"Meat sweats do not exist," Dr. Layman stated. "No one has ever reported sweating in the trials that have been done," he continued.
Meat may not produce perspiration because, while protein raises body temperature more than other macronutrients, the relative temperature rise is minimal. The ladies in the 2002 study had body temperatures that were only 0.2 to 0.3 degrees higher on average after following the protein-heavy diet.
Dr. St-Onge, who had never heard of "meat sweats," said it's conceivable to perspire slightly after eating a lot of meat, but "I don't think people would start sweating abundantly," she added.
However, she cautioned that consuming meat when already feeling heated could push you over the edge. "You will sweat if you have a high-meat supper in the midst of summer in Midtown Manhattan, outside, and it's like 90 degrees," she remarked.
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