Hi,
I made a raw soup with the following ingredients:

Broccoli, cashews, cilantro, onions, sea salt, lemon, water

Ten minutes after we started eating, my wife and I both become very
sleepy retiring to sleep before we finished our food. We awoke an hour
later feeling 'stoned'. Neither of us were very tired and it was early
evening.

My question is: What in the recipe could have caused this? Is there
something in these foods or this combination of foods that would cause
this?

That is a very interesting question-- and, it sounds like, an interesting soup!

Unless there is an irregularity in one of the ingredients, it may be
the tryptophan in the cashews that caused the effect.

It is often said that the Thanksgiving turkey contains tryptophan
enough to make you sleepy, but as this URL suggests, tryptophan works
best (if at all) on an empty stomach:

 - http://home.howstuffworks.com/question519.htm

Cashews have a higher concentration of tryptophan than turkey, so if
you ate the soup on an empty stomach and there were plenty of cashews,
that's the only reasonable cuplrit other than a foreign ingredient
that you didn't mention or didn't notice.

You might try the soup again on an empty stomach to see if the effect
repeats itself.  If so, try the recipe with pine nuts (which have a
much lower concentration of tryptophan) or try the recipe with almonds
(which have a higher concentration of tryptophan) to see if the effect
varies accordingly.

If you like the effect enough to want to experience it again, you
might also look into L-tryptophan supplements, which are now available
on the market once again.

---

Request for Answer Clarification by silentsprawl-ga on 04 Jun 2004 11:09 PDT

Hey, thanks for the great answer. Do you have a source for the
concentration of tryptophan in cashews?

---

Clarification of Answer by dharbigt-ga on 04 Jun 2004 11:41 PDT

Tryptophan content:

Cashews: .325 grams/cup
Almonds: .508 grams/cup
Pine nuts: .08 grams/cup
Turkey: .06 grams/oz

This is from the USDA Agricultural Handbook (1-23) - I can't find a
date, but I believe it's 1990 edition.  USDA has nutrient data on this
website, but I referred to a bound edition, which may be slightly out
of date.

 - http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/foodcomp/

Cool. Thanks for the excellent answer and the clarification.

This sounds vaguely familiar. Did you happen to dream about bears by
chance after eating this porridge and falling asleep?

tutuzdad-ga

har-dee-har-har