Have you ever eaten a spicy curry or a grilled cheese sandwich right before bed? Did you end up having a bizarre and maybe even realistic dream that night? Then your dream may not have been from God- it may have been from your diet.
It’s been long believed that what you eat before bed can affect your dreams. These are now commonly referred to as ‘pizza’ dreams as pizza is often blamed as a main culprit for causing unusual dreams and nightmares. It is believed that cheese, bread, and the greasiness specifically in pizza are to blame. Many also believe that spicy foods will cause problems as well, so a spicy pizza would probably only amplify your dreams’ unusualness. But are there any grounds for these beliefs?
There was actually a study (Nielsen & Powell, 2015) on this very topic. This study asked participants to answer questionnaires over the course of 2 weeks. This questionnaire asked about diet, late night eating and whether there were any bizarre or disturbing dreams. 17.8% said that food did affect them. 11.5% of participants claimed that what they ate affected their dreams with dairy, sugar, spicy foods and junk food being the main things blamed. 9.5% claimed that late night eating affected their dreams. 17.8% is no small amount, so does this mean our diet does influence our dreams?
It is still unclear how much food plays a role in our dreams. The study suggests there may be a connection but without studying participants more closely it is still uncertain as bias, among other things, may play a role in participants answers. Then what should we make of our unusual dreams? All sorts of dreams occur without having any significance and the vast majority of them can be ignored (or written down for later amusements). Dreaming occurs outside of the spiritual more frequently than not as a part of our body’s natural process.
Even though pizza isn’t necessarily affecting our dreams, for the sake of convenience the term ‘pizza dream’ will be used throughout our site to refer to dreams that don’t have any spiritual significance. Unless, of course, God is actually putting pizza into your dreams- then that may be an entirely different story.
*Nielsen T, Powell RA. Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend: food and diet as instigators of bizarre and disturbing dreams. Front Psychol. 2015 Feb 17;6:47. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00047. PMID: 25741294; PMCID: PMC4330685.
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