Baby bites avoid bigger bellies

A recent study revealed that if 50 col­lege stu­dents were given a bagel uncut or a bagel cut into quar­ters the group that were given the cut up bagel con­sumed less. Sub­jects who received the sin­gle uncut bagel ate more calo­ries from both the bagel and the test meal that fol­lowed the bagel eating.

The researchers showed that when food is cut up into smaller pieces, less is con­sumed. They believe that food served in smaller amounts may be more sat­is­fy­ing than a sin­gle, uncut por­tion of food.

The author said that cut­ting food up into smaller pieces may be ben­e­fi­cial to peo­ple who are try­ing to make meals more fill­ing while lim­it­ing por­tion con­trol. One of the rea­sons that this might be effec­tive is an actual opti­cal illusion.

When some­thing is divided into a smaller pro­por­tion the sur­face area of the food is increased. The more of the prod­uct that is seen with the eyes, the more the belly thinks it is receiv­ing. That the­ory, my friends, is def­i­nitely mind over mat­ter, or oth­er­wise known as an opti­cal illusion.

Another expla­na­tion has to do with man­ners. Tak­ing a few bites out of a bagel and leav­ing it is either judged as wast­ing food or being rude enough to expect some­one else to gnaw on your half eaten bagel. When there are pieces of a bagel avail­able, it is not a faux pas to take one or two small pieces and leave the rest.

Yet another expla­na­tion has to do with how the body digests food. Tak­ing a large bite out of a bagel and not ade­quately chew­ing it, in other words, swal­low­ing a big bite whole surely increases the speed in which the bagel is con­sumed. It takes your brain 15 to 20 min­utes to process the fact that your stom­ach is get­ting a full sensation.

If food is eaten quickly and in big chunks, your brain does not have the required time to reg­is­ter that your tank is on full. How­ever, if food is eaten slowly in smaller bites, the brain and belly balk at cram­ming more into the mouth. A feel­ing of full­ness appears and voila, fewer calo­ries are consumed.

To take this one step fur­ther, just mak­ing the effort to cut food into pieces and pick up the fork to put it into the mouth takes addi­tional time. That is valu­able time for the brain and gut to communicate.

Although this research was nec­es­sary to ful­fill someone’s mas­ter or doc­tor­ate degree, I really didn’t need the sta­tis­tics to be con­vinced. Take small bites, chew slowly and less will be con­sumed. It is ignor­ing the feel­ing of full­ness, the sen­sa­tion of sati­ety that gets many peo­ple in trou­ble with over con­sump­tion of calories.

There is one excep­tion where I have per­sonal expe­ri­ence. If I have an entire one ounce choco­late bar in front of me and I break it into pieces, I am still going to eat every one of those choco­late morsels. Con­sider M&Ms. They are already lit­tle pieces. How would I break them into smaller pieces? Per­haps that is another study for another day.

Bob­bie Ran­dall is a cer­ti­fied dia­betes edu­ca­tor, reg­is­tered, licensed dietit­ian. She super­vises a dia­betes self-management train­ing pro­gram at Aultman-Orrville Hos­pi­tal, Orrville. Con­tact her at bobbie.randall@aultmanorrville.org or 330–684-4776.

Posted by Bobbie Randall on Jul 18 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.