Food For Thought… “Talking Nutrition
Chew Your Food
You’re all grown up now, but ignoring your mother’s advice to chew your food may still be costing you – in calories that is. The obstacles to chewing food thoroughly include short lunches, long commutes, and even longer work hours, but if you’re willing to put in the extra chomps, you may eat less. So say researchers at the Functional Food Centre at Oxford Brookes University.
Keep Chewing
Some rightly associate the chew-your-food notion with eating slowly, but Dr. Hendrik Smit and his colleagues studied an obvious aspect of eating slowly: chewing more. Their findings were focused squarely on chews per mouthful (cpm) as it pertains to food intake, not the speed of eating. The study found “35 cpm reduced the amount consumed compared to 10 cpm by 12%, even though meal duration (the time it took to eat until feeling ‘comfortably full’) was twice as long.” Published in Appetite, Smit’s study matches the results of a study by researchers at Harbin Medical University in China. They compared 40 cpm with 15 cpm and saw a similar 12% reduction in food intake. The Chinese study found lower levels of ghrelin, a hormone that controls hunger, in those who chewed more.
Fletcherism
Smit was inspired to pilot the study after reading about Horace Fletcher, dubbed “The Great Masticator,” whose food fad of the late 1800’s and early 1900’s urged people to chew food at least once for every tooth or 32 times per mouthful before swallowing. The supposed result was a reduced risk of becoming overweight and, according to his personal physician, “cured such ailments as gout, boils on his neck and face, eczema and his, “loss of interest” in life and his work.” Fletcher’s creed was simple: “Chew your food well – eat only when you are hungry.”
How to Get More Chews
According to a Subway study in the UK, Britons reported chewing only about 6 times per mouthful before swallowing, with a reported 93% chewing less than Subway’s recommended 25 times per mouthful or 500 chews per product. Their corresponding campaign, Subway’s Mastication Master Class, gives tips on how to chew more. If you’re not interested in counting a chew per tooth as Fletcher suggests, in addition to chewing your food completely before swallowing, the American Dietetic Association suggests the following tips to eat slower:
- Put down your utensils between each bite.
- Use chopsticks instead of Western utensils.
- Make meal time a social time. Engage in conversation to stretch out the meal and interrupt your eating.
Your thoughts… Do you know how many chews per mouthful you make before swallowing?
