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  • Picture yourself at a summer barbecue, chowing down on burgers, hot dogs, and ribs.

  • But somewhere between the 3rd helping and the resulting food coma you experience an extremely uncomfortable zone of overeating.

  • My friends, I'm talking about the meat sweats.

  • Now, you might have had this experience, but is there any science to back up this meaty meme?

  • The idea that eating food can raise our body temperature isn't anything new.

  • Warming up slightly is a totally normal byproduct of our bodies using energy.

  • And our bodies use lots of energyby exercising, of course, but also just by being alive and having a heartbeat.

  • The other way is through something called diet induced thermogenesis, or DIT.

  • Food doesn't just instantly get converted into usable calories

  • your body has to put in some energy to start the breakdown process, so it takes energy to make energy.

  • DIT is usually around 5 to 15 percent of your daily caloric use.

  • And while it's tricky to measure super accurately, the more calories you eat, the higher your DIT will generally be.

  • And that might be the secret to the meat sweats.

  • Protein has a higher DIT than any other macronutrient like fat or carbohydrates,

  • so you'll use more calories to digest that thousand calorie rack of ribs than the same thousand calories of ice cream.

  • The proteins found in food are chunky molecules that take time and energy to break down into more digestible components.

  • And this increased thermogenic effect might have to do with the fact that your body doesn't have an efficient storage system for those amino acids.

  • Now, while increased protein consumption is strongly linked to increased thermogenesis and a slightly increased body temperature, it's not so much of an increase that it'll cause you to overheat.

  • No actual studies have linked meat consumption directly to the act of sweating.

  • So what other factors could there be?

  • One could be the spice that we use to season meat.

  • Capsaicin, the chemical that gives peppers their pungency, can increase thermogenesis also, despite having no calories.

  • So that wholetakes energy to make energything doesn't really apply here, but spicy seasonings could potentially make you even warmer than bland meat would.

  • Ultimately, this meme got popular from competitive eaters eating dozens of hot dogs in the sun,

  • and Guy Fieri taking you to Flavortown over a hot grill.

  • So, the meat sweats might be an actual thing, but we still need some direct evidence.

  • Thank you for asking, and thanks to our patrons for supporting what we do here at SciShow.

  • If you want to help us make even more videos about all kinds of different science, check out patreon.com/scishow.

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