Today's useless fact - Does eating red meat cause weird dreams?
Weird dreams are God's way of apologizing for having created
logic. It's a widely held belief that eating, say, a juicy T-bone
or prime rib for dinner will make your evening's in-flight
entertainment odder than usual. There might be some truth to it,
but it has nothing to do with any specific chemicals in the meat
itself. "A lot of people believe that what they eat directly
determines or at least influences their dream content," notes
Harvard dream expert J. Allan Hobson, "but there's absolutely no
evidence for it."
However, red meat is, for many people, notoriously hard to
digest. Most likely all that's happening is that you're having
trouble breaking down that big steak. Throughout the night, the
gastric activity is repeatedly waking you up while visions are
still dancing in your head. The more details you can recall, the
stranger your dreams are going to seem - because, as Hobson puts
it, "Dreams are 'normally' weird." It's just that indigestion is
giving you a clearer glimpse of the Fellini films that regularly
play up there. So next time, skip the Tagamet and enjoy the show.
