Time spent chewing food important for satiety

While read­ing a recent nutri­tion research arti­cle I looked up and gazed at the cal­en­dar. It is two weeks before Hal­loween and I haven’t pur­chased my trick or treat candy yet. I usu­ally buy it and then spend the next two weeks try­ing to not devour every sin­gle bit of it until the bewitch­ing night.

Per­haps it is to my ben­e­fit that my candy is behind the locked doors of the gro­cery store when I wake up in the mid­dle of the night crav­ing a piece of choco­late. Just not hav­ing it under my roof is help­ful to my waist­line and my pocketbook.

Get­ting back to the nutri­tion research I was read­ing makes me think of Hal­loween treats. The arti­cle sited a study of how the amount of chew­ing is involved in feel­ing full. The amount of time spent actu­ally chew­ing a food can have an impor­tant impact on the feel­ing of fullness.

The study revealed that the longer some­thing is chewed then swal­lowed, the more full the per­son will become. So the idea of chew­ing on rab­bit food like cel­ery, car­rots, let­tuce and cab­bage when diet­ing can affect the amount of food eaten.

Let me link this con­cept to Hal­loween treats. Chew every bite well. The swill in your mouth is a com­bi­na­tion of saliva and sweet­ness. The longer it is manip­u­lated in the mouth the more fla­vor is extracted for your plea­sure. And that is only one of the benefits.

The longer your teeth mas­ti­cate the munchies the longer your belly will say it is full. So the length of time involved with chew­ing not only stim­u­lates your taste buds but also helps to reduce the inci­dence of overeat­ing. A rec­om­mended help­ful hint is to recite the ABCs with every bite.

While unwrap­ping a small bite-size candy bar make a pact with your jaws that this morsel will be appre­ci­ated by each of the 10,000 taste buds in your mouth. Decide that each caramel will receive more than the usual four bites, let it grad­u­ally melt in your mouth with the assis­tance of mul­ti­ple small chews. Allow choco­late to warm up to your body tem­per­a­ture of 98.6 degrees in order to allow the full fla­vor to blos­som in your mouth as you chew on its goodness.

Many weight loss pro­grams advo­cate lengthy chew­ing times. This exer­cises the jaw mus­cles and acti­vates sec­tions of the brain to rec­og­nize sati­ety. Sati­ety is the feel­ing of full­ness sim­i­lar to the hour after a Thanks­giv­ing feast.

This research is another rea­son why foods with a high fiber con­tent are ben­e­fi­cial to weight con­trol and main­tain­ing a sta­ble blood glu­cose level. As the food is chewed, a small amount slips past the epiglot­tis and trav­els down the esoph­a­gus to the stom­ach. This grad­u­ally fills up the gut instead of dump­ing mas­sive amounts at one time.

Enjoy the treats of the sea­son, the candy bars, caramel corn and choco­lates. Keep your jaws mov­ing with every bite. Your taste buds will love it and your stom­ach will feel more full.

Bob­bie Ran­dall is a cer­ti­fied dia­betes edu­ca­tor and a 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 Oct 17 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.