Chew Slower, Get Bigger
Table of Contents
Joey Chestnutis the world champion of eating fast, he ate 61 hot dogs to take his eighth belt this year. Joey has the world record for the most hot dogs eaten in 10 minutes.
Chew Slower, Get Bigger
I don’t know if you have ever seen older people eat, but they tend to eat slow and that’s something that bodybuilders and athletes can learn from. most athletes are done with their meals whereas older adults are not even a quarter of the way finished. Eating slow is associated with a number of health benefits such as improved digestion and greater weight control. Conversely, eating a meal fast results in impaired digestion. One of the most important benefits of eating slowly is that it gives your body time to recognize that you’re full. It takes about twenty minutes from the start of a meal for the brain to send out signals of satiety. Eating slowing helps you to eat less because if gives your body time to receive the appetite regulation signal to stop eating. Both large-scale population studies and research on smaller groups who habitually eat quickly concur: Fast eaters gain more weight over time than slow eaters. At the University of Rhode Island, researchers examined how eating speed affected the early stages of digestive processing by observing 60 young adults eat a meal.
- Slow eaters consumed 2 ounces of food per minute.
- Medium-speed eaters consumed 2.5 ounces of food per minute.
- Fast eaters consumed 3.1 ounces per minute. They also took larger bites and chewed less before swallowing.
What this means is that fast eaters are putting down more food than the slow eating group, additionally, food is getting less time to digest and less feedback from the brain to stop eating. In another University of Rhode Island study, researchers served lunch on two different occasions to 30 normal-weight women. The meal in both cases consisted of an enormous plate of pasta with a tomato-vegetable sauce and some Parmesan cheese, along with a glass of water. At each visit, researchers instructed the women to eat to the point of comfortable fullness. But during one visit, they also told them to to eat as quickly as possible, while on the other visit, participants were asked to eat slowly and to put down their utensils between bites.
When the researchers compared the difference in food consumption between the quickly eaten lunch and the slowly eaten lunch, here is what they found:
- When eating quickly the women consumed 646 calories in 9 minutes.
- When eating slowly the women consumed 579 calories in 29 minutes.
That is 67 less calories in 20 more minutes! So if you are looking to control your weight, make a conscious effort to eat more slowly. Now here comes the last piece of evidence to show why you should slow down your eating. Eating fast and not chewing your food properly slows down protein synthesis rates. Take a look at the following study which examined elderly people eating and how their food was properly chewed.
The rate of protein digestion affects protein utilization in elderly subjects. Although meat is a widely consumed protein source, little is known of its digestion rate and how it can be affected by the chewing capacity of elderly subjects. Researchers measured the absorption rate of meat protein and to estimate the utilization of meat protein in elderly subjects with different chewing efficiency. Twenty elderly volunteers aged 60-75 y were involved in the study. Ten of them had healthy natural dentition, and the other 10 were edentulous and wore complete dentures. Basically, those who had teeth were able to chew their food more effectively than those that wore dentures. At the end of the study, a rapid increase in plasma aminoacidemia and plasma leucine entry rate was observed after meat intake in dentate subjects. In complete denture wearers the increase in leucine entry rate was delayed, and the amount of leucine appearing in peripheral blood during the whole postprandial period was lower than in dentate subjects. Postprandial whole-body protein synthesis was lower in denture wearers than in dentate subjects (30% compared with 48% of leucine intake, respectively). Meat proteins could be classified as fast digested proteins. However, this property depends on the chewing capacity of elderly subjects. This study showed that meat protein utilization for protein synthesis can be impaired by a decrease in the chewing efficiency of elderly subjects.
So to sum up the studies, eating slowly not only keeps your weight in check but also can result in greater protein synthesis so chew your food slowly and enjoy the health benefits.
Rémond D, Machebeuf M, Yven C, Buffière C, Mioche L, Mosoni L, Patureau MirandP. Postprandial whole-body protein metabolism after a meatmeal is influenced by chewing efficiency in elderly subjects. Am J Clin Nutr. 2007 May;85(5):1286-92.
Andrade A, Greene G, Melanson K. Eating slowly led to decreases in energy intake within meals in healthy women. J Am Diet Assoc. 2008;108(7):1186-1191.
eong SL, Madden C, Gray A, Waters D, Horwath C. Faster self-reported speed of eating is related to higher body mass index in a nationwide survey of middle-aged women. J Am Diet Assoc. 2011;111(8):1192–1197.
Otsuka R, Tamakoshi K, Yatsuya H, Murata C, Sekiya A, Wada K, Zhang HM, Matsushita K, Sugiura K, Takefuji S. et al. Eating fast leads to obesity: findings based on self-administered questionnaires among middle-aged Japanese men and women. J Epidemiol. 2006;16(3):117–124
