Chewing your food thoroughly reduces your risk of obesity
Researchers from Osaka University (Japan) studied the relationship between speed of food consumption, feelings of fullness and excess weight. Just under half of the 3,000 study participants said they usually eat very quickly.

The likelihood of gaining excess weight for men who are accustomed to quickly absorbing food is 84% compared to people who eat “with feeling, sense, and order.” For women, this risk is twice as high. And for those who eat quickly and don’t stop until they feel full, the risk of gaining weight is three times greater! The study results were published in the British Medical Journal.

According to Professor Ian McDonald, a nutritionist at the University of Nottingham, the reasons for this lie in the failure of the signaling system, which should warn the body when to stop eating. The habit of eating quickly disrupts the normal functioning of the signaling system, which is supposed to transmit a signal to the brain to stop eating when the stomach is full. “If you eat quickly, your stomach fills faster than your digestive system can produce the necessary signal. Consequently, the stomach is more likely to become overloaded,” he says.

The professor points out that the habit of eating quickly can be developed in childhood. However, according to him, it can be eliminated, and deliberately stretching out meals can lead to weight loss. “Probably the grandmothers who teach children to chew each piece thoroughly, making 20 chewing movements, are right. If you eat a little slower, you'll eat less,” added Ian McDonald.

According to Australian scientists Elizabeth Denny-Wilson and Karen Campbell, the mechanism by which modern people gain weight was, until recently, a positive evolutionary factor. It gave an advantage to people who managed to grab more food in conditions where it was scarce. They say children should be taught to eat slowly and allowed to leave food on the plate if they feel they can't take it anymore.

Jason Halford, director of the Digestive Laboratory at the University of Liverpool, notes that researchers into the causes of obesity are increasingly paying attention to people's eating behavior. In a study published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology, he found that the anti-obesity drug sibutramine slowed down the rate of food consumption in patients. “Japanese scientists have shown that differences in people's eating behavior are associated with overeating and obesity. Another study found that young children also eat quickly. This suggests that this predisposition may be genetic or acquired in childhood,” said Jason Halford. He notes, however, that scientists have not yet found evidence that trying to get children to eat slowly reduces their risk of becoming obese in the future.