I had never noticed this behavior until it was mentioned on a NYPD Blue episode. Sipowitz is on his first date with Sylvia when she comments he is sweating while hes consuming a big steak. She tells him that her dad and brothers also dab their foreheads with the napkin while eating. This is evidently some sort of turn-on for her. (Thats a whole different issue.) In any case I have been more aware of this and have noticed many people seem to do this.
Was Sipowitz eating the steak with A-1 Sauce? Some people think that’s kind of spicy, and spicy foods make some people sweat.
But it seems that the woman’s dad and brothers probably didn’t eat steak with A-1 for every meal, so if they were sweating every time they ate, it must have been something else.
Is Sipowitz the somewhat-overweight character? It’s been some years since I watched that program.
Most of the sweaty eaters I’ve seen have been overweight. Total WAG here, but assuming the overweight condition is caused purely by overeating (as opposed to a medical condition), the sweat may be simply the result of the person exerting himself when he eats. People who have food addictions may tend to chew their food with great gusto so they can swallow it and get another forkful into their mouths as quickly as possible. The actions of rapidly and continuously cutting the food and bringing it to the mouth can also be sweat-inducing exertion.
Some foods, especially salty ones, can raise the eater’s blood pressure, which I think can raise the skin temperature by quiclkly pumping fresh blood to the body’s surface and facilitating heat transfer, prompting perspiration.
If the person tends to liberally pepper his food, that would obviously cause perspiration. Pepper (black, white, red), aside from tasting hot also have a thinning effect on the blood once they’re absorbed into the body. Thinner blood transfers heat more rapidly than thick blood. (This may be one reason why spicy food is so popular in hot, dry climates.)
Alcohol? The warm feeling you get from alcohol is the sensation of heat leaving the body (which is why drinking brandy or whiskey when you’re caught in a blizzard is a really bad idea - it doesn’t warm you up, it cools you off) So again, your body heat radiating out through your skin will trigger perspiration.
Also, years of observation in restaurants has shown me that many chronic overeaters/food addicts also have a tendency to take huge bites. They put so much food into their mouths at once that the chewing action takes much more effort than if they had taken a smaller bite.
I’m not overweight, in fact I have to keep after myself to eat enough. And I will start to sweat when I eat. I do like spicy food, but, in fact, when I drink a glass of water, I will start to sweat.
Maybe it is simply the transfer of the heat from the food into your body that causes the sweating. When you are eating a recently cooked steak, the heat of each bite, combined also with the heat emanating from the food and the plate into the air in front of you, could cause you to sweat.
Do you guys remember Pavlov and his dogs?
My father loved spicy foods, really spicy foods. (BTW Phase42 A-1 does NOT equal spicy, 'k?) We are talking some mega chiles here. When he would eat those he would sweat. He would sweat a lot. No he was not overweight.
Anyway when he went to the supermarket if he walked down the asile with the chiles he would break out into a sweat! Not any other asile, just the one with the chiles.
We used to raze the shit out of him about this. Told him we were going to start ringing a bell.
One of the more common causes of sweating during food consumption is the presence of spices. Chile peppers in particular induce profuse perspiration for some individuals. Capsaicum oil (from Greek, kapto, meaning “to bite”) is a vasodilator. It has long been suspected that this vascular action may be the reason why commonly overweight Mexican males have nowhere near the rates of cardiovascular disease their northern counterparts do.
That flush of heat on your forehead while you eat spicy Mexican food is due to your blood vessles dilating and therefore carrying more blood (and more heat) past your tissues. This is also part of the reason why your nose and sinuses tend to water while eating hot peppers.
My three year old son sweats when he eats, has done since he was a newborn! From the time he started on solids at about six months, for about a year and a half, he used to pant and gasp, and a tear or two used to escape when he ate, too. (The sheer joy of eating??)
He is just a sweaty kid though, he sweats when he eats, sleeps, or moves more than just a little bit. And we are not talking slightly damp - we are talking beads of sweat rolling off him and hair and pillow soaked.
His father does the same to a lesser degree - older son and I don’t. Dad is slightly overweight, three year old son and I are spot on correct weight, and older son is slightly underweight, so in our family there is no correlation between body mass and eating/sweating.
Speculation: Could it be from holding one’s breath while eating?
I once had dinner with a family that all seemed to hold their breaths a bit more than what was necessary for swallowing. I will breathe normally, but will then naturally pause when I swallow (so food doesn’t go down the wrong pipe.)
For this family, one parent and both kids held their breaths from the start of the bite until they swallowed (followed by a large exhale which kind of annoyed me which is why I remember). That seemed almost be like they were exerting themselves. They were sweating while eating, but it was a very warm day, so we all may have been, I don’t remember.
Although spicy foods can cause you to sweat, there is a phenomonon called “diet-induced thermogeneis” which is the generation of heat in the body due to eating. It is a means of getting rid of excess energy being consumed:
Based on my own experience, I think that some people are just extraordinarily sensitive to spices.
For example, I won’t sweat when eating something as bland as an apple, but citrus will cause me to sweat a bit. A little pepper on my steak will cause me to sweat a little more. Spaghetti sauce will force me to use a napkin to wipe my brow. Something truly spicy like Cajun will send me into a Broadcast News style flop sweat.
I am the source of much hilarity with my coworkers. I try to watch what I eat, but can’t always be too picky. On a trip to India, the wait staff at one restaurant were unsuccessfully suppressing their laughter as they brought towels to me. I soaked 'em as fast as they brought 'em.
Hee, I’m gonna make fun of you wimpies, cajun spicy? Pepper, spicy? Maybe I’ve burned off my tastebuds…I love chopped or pureed habaneros as a sauce. I do have to say that they do make me sweat while eating…usually my forehead and my nose gets stuffy as mentioned above…
I have no idea where I read this (might have been here, actually), but the idea is that the body holds some energy in reserve between meals, just in case it happens to be a long time before you eat again.
The first taste of food signals to the body that a new supply of energy is coming and it proceeds to release its energy store, causing a rise in body temperature.
Now that I type it, it sounds rather ludicrous. Any possibility of this? I’m thin and often sweat when eating less-than-spicy foods.
There’s the rub. Perhaps it is simply a matter of genetics as Hokkaido Brit wrote. I can certainly see other factors may cause this reaction, but it appears some people for no discernable reason may just eat and sweat.
