How much can you eat before that stomach-straining, nausea-inducing feeling strikes? You know the one. It invariably presents sometime after Christmas lunch. Or when you meet family obligations and back up a three-course lunch with a four-course dinner with the in-laws.

Suddenly you're feeling as stuffed as the turducken - for the uninitiated that's a deboned chicken stuffed into a deboned duck, stuffed into a deboned turkey.

The science website Nova, associated with the Australian Academy of Science, points out that the capacity of the human stomach is not as great as you might think.

An adult stomach can comfortably hold about one litre of food and drink. Any more than that and things start to get uncomfortable.