The Health Benefits of Chewing Slowly

How long do you normally take to eat your meals? 5 minutes? 10 minutes?

In the hectic lifestyles that the majority of us lead these days, many of us have to cram so much activity into a day that we are overwhelmed. We find that we are often faced with the choice to eat on the move or not eat at all. Well it’s about time we realized how important it is to make time in our lives for eating.

If really you want to reap the maximum rewards from your healthy eating, then you might literally want to slow down and chew over this research.

Latest studies have shown that by chewing your food much more slowly at each sitting, you will actually consume fewer calories, feel more satiated, absorb the nutrients found within them more efficiently, and relieve yourself of the usual stomach distention and indigestion that comes from rushing the consumption of your meals.

Consider this: It takes your stomach about 20 minutes to produce the hormones that tell your brain that you are full. This process doesn’t start until your stomach begins to stretch. If you slow down, you give yourself more time to feel full. This gives you a better chance of stopping before you "get stuffed".

When we eat too fast, our brain continues to seek the pleasure we receive from eating, preventing us from feeling our fullness and causing us to overeat and feel hungry all the time.

The majority of the foods that we eat today are far to acidic, and therefore the role of our saliva plays a much more important function than ever before by putting the food into proper balance to aid digestion. Eating slowly allows more saliva to be created which helps with the breakdown of nutrients and alkalise the food more, thus attracting more stomach acids and aiding in the absorption of protein. If your food is more alkaline than acidic, it will have less chance of being passed through the small intestine efficiently. Food that enters through the small intestine helps create more healthy alkaline blood. When your blood is more acidic, valuable minerals are lost, such as calcium, which we need from our food for healthy bones. Acidic blood can also weaken your organs such as the kidneys, heart, and lungs.

So remember what your mama always told you, "slow down and chew your food".