Cheaper by the Dozen is a black/white film that as a kid I watched on more than one occasion. A memorable scene in my mind was when father Gilbreth demonstrates to his (dozen) kids how best to take a shower. Now granted, I religiously ignore his instructions, but think of it often as my luxurious hot water escapes down the drain. The movie was based on Frank Bunker Gilbreth, an efficiency buff. During the first half of the 1900s the nation was rather obsessed with the notion of efficiency.
Another real-life character, Horace Fletcher, may represent an epitome of the movement. Proclaiming himself an “economic nutritionist,” he was not a nutritionist, nor a doctor, but developed a theory about food waste. According to Mary Roach, the author of Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal, Fletcher espoused that if you gave the poor half the food, they could get more nutrients from it by simply chewing more.
His theory was not like your mom chiding you to chew better. But instead he promoted hundreds of chews per bite until the mouthful is reduced to liquefaction and is involuntarily swallowed.
Take a breath…. I am not promoting that 100-year old notion of 100 chews. Better mastication habits are closer to Ayurveda medicine having a history of many thousands years.
And we might go back even further. In their book Hardwired: How Our Instincts to Be Healthy are Making Us Sick (2021) the authors, Robert S. Barrett and Louis Hugo Francescutti, explain that what may be considered bad habits today are frequently things we are hardwired to do. At one point in evolution, we may have had to consume as much as we could in the freshly-discovered ripened berry patch, and as quickly as possible, before the local bear came upon the delicacy. Such scenarios are numerous for that time, but now our over-abundance of food (along with questionable processed products) set us up for a difficult life-threating situation. Further, it’s challenging to struggle against our “hard-wiring.”
Digestion Process
Mastication (the technical word for chewing) is the first step in preparation for the digestion that follows. Your teeth grind and break down the food, the mechanical beginning. The biochemical changes begin when the small food bits mix with salvia. Even though your stomach regularly breaks down food (starting the absorption segment), it can be done barely-adequately, or done very well depending on what the mouth delivers.
Enzymes contained in the salvia initiate the digestion process. Lingual Lipase for instance begins the breakdown of fats (which will help later in regard to weight). Amylase, another enzyme works on carbs.
Before tackling claims of a common promotion (namely weight loss), let’s look at other advantages of slow chewing.
Chewing Important for Nutrients
While better chewing is not always (clearly) linked to an increase in nutrients rescued from food, there are echoes of Horace Fletcher (the Great Masticator interested in efficiency) who has been somewhat vindicated. I found Fletcher’s motive suspect in regard to the poor, but it appears that because better chewing does aid digestion and better gut function, it delivers a bit more nutrients.
The longer time those enzymes have to break down food (through slower chewing), the greater aid to digestion, also easing the energy it takes your body to process food. When food is broken down, micronutrients (such as vitamins and minerals) and macronutrients (fatty acids, amino-acids, glucose) are absorbed from the small intestines into the blood stream for delivery around the body.
Pre-digestion into smaller pieces creates more efficiency of absorption in the large and small intestine. Researchers studied adults grazing on 55 grams of almonds, chewing 10, 25 or 40 times each. The study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition demonstrated that more nutrients were absorbed with slower chewing.
Improve Digestion Problems with Better Chewing
One noted report says pre-digestion also avoids the alternative break down process by harmful bacteria and fungi in the gut and digestive tract. If you are one of the many Americans (74%) who regularly experience distress from digestion, this one small step may partially reduce it.
In another study, it was determined that of the 142 subjects with chewing difficulties, 60% had chronic digestive complaints. Specifically, 32 reported pain in the abdomen (burning, bloating or cramps), 12 had either regular constipation or diarrhea and 41 suffered both. As a person with occasional, mild TMJ issues, I was fascinated to read that chewing corrections aided abdominal and gut conditions. The subjects underwent jaw surgery with restoration of their normal chewing. After that, 85% reported significant reduction in abdominal pain and 64% noted restoration of normal bowel function.
Conversely to the pros of slow eating are the cons of fast eating. Fast eating has been linked to a 35% increase in risk for a cluster of health conditions known as “metabolic syndrome,” this includes high blood pressure, poor cholesterol, elevated blood sugar and excess abdominal fat.
Chewing to Prevent Choking
“It went down the wrong way.” We have probably all said that during a meal after recovering from violent coughing. Luckily, if you are coughing loudly, you are not exactly choking. Yet according to the National Safety Council, thousands of people die of chocking every year. According to the council’s “Injury Facts” of 2017, choking is the 4th leading cause of unintentional death.
Most of these incidents happen at home. Often people are alone. In 2015 of the 5,051 deaths reported from chocking, 2848 were folks 74 years or older.
Food is most responsible. Other risk factors related to aging are living alone, difficulty swallowing or having denture problems. But food is the major culprit. Choking is often caused by pieces of food that instead of moving down the esophagus get lodged in the airway. The person is generally unable to speak, breath, make noise or cough. The blockage causes lack of oxygen, leading to bluish tint of skin and lips. Worse can follow. The Heimlich maneuver may be needed.
Luckily, chewing food well (and taking particular care if you have dentures or mouth appliances) can prevent this scary scenario. It can prevent choking, prevent deaths.
Oh C’mon – Chewing Helps Cognitive Function?
In the past, I have mentioned studies showing that gum-chewing boosts cognitive performance (A Dozen Things Learned During 2017 — Aging with Pizzazz #4), but what about chewing food? First, there is anecdotal evidence that as people age, they generally chew less. As indicated above, this frequently results in chronic health and digestive abnormalities. That was no surprise to me, but the following was a revelation.
A meta-analysis of numerous studies found that longer chewing lead to improved attention and alertness, leading to elevated cognitive performance. Of the studies evaluated, 64% showed that chewing food (or gum) had positive effects on attention and mental focus.
Partially, this may be due to multiple neural circuits which connect the action of chewing with the hippocampus. The hippocampus is a portion of our brain directly linked to cognitive function.
Weight Loss a Secondary Benefit to Better Mastication
Admittedly, I eat slowly. Dinner mates could scarf down 500 calories while I am on the first two forkfuls. Yet, I’m not “skinny.” Still all of us (whether skinny, in-between or obese) could take in fewer calories by chewing more. Numerous studies back up this proclamation.
Clearly, there are no good reasons to eat quickly if there is no demand to do so, and no bears on the path to the berry patch. Unfortunately, habit is the prime reason it happens – and we know habits are difficult to break, especially if we doubt the benefit.
How does Chewing Longer Reduce Calories?
Calorie intake and appetite are largely hormone-driven.
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- Hormone Ghrelin tells the brain “I’m hungry”
- GLP-1 (glucagon-like peptide) relays “I’m full”
- CCK (Cholecystokinin) relays the same message of “I’m full”
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The hunger hormone starts the process. But after you eat, your digestive system suppresses ghrelin and releases anti-hunger hormones so your brain knows you’ve eaten. All around a great system! EXCEPT that the process takes about 20 minutes to complete. If you quickly gobble a bunch of food (while the 20-minute window is still open), your brain hasn’t registered the correct responses. Result? People gain more weight. It adds up from the tiny amount of extra calories at each meal.
A 2011 study (American Journal of Clinical Nutrition) tracked hormone levels of participants who ate their food quickly or slowly (low versus high amounts of chewing action). The researchers demonstrated that when the participants chewed longer there were lower levels of ghrelin and increased levels of GLP-1 and CCK. It’s kind of like a natural, micro-stomach stapling; subjects felt fuller even after consuming less food.
The hormone change is not just genetic. The Journal of Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics reported on the test of 70 men and women of normal, overweight or obese weight. They ate the same meal twice: once slowly and another time quickly. During the second meal, when subjects chewed their food slowly and thoroughly, they reported feeling less hungry (after an hour) then when they ate quickly.
Considering the varying findings available, it’s almost impossible to get an exact read on what your own results might be, but all the outcomes cumulate on the “negative” side. The minimum decrease in calories ingested with chewing more is approximately 4%, the most common figure is about 11.9 / 12%, and the authors of Hardwired state (in a recent interview) a 20% plus decrease in extra calories.
Another research team completed a retrospective longitudinal study tracking fast and slow eaters for over 8 years. Slow eaters gained less weigh regardless of their BMI (Body Mass Index), drinking habits or how often they exercised. The researchers may not be laying the benefits solely at the feet (teeth?) of chewing, but it is impressive. [Although, please, no one is suggesting less exercise.]
Does Less Chewing mean Less Food, Less Enjoyment?
Eating more slowly may reduce your intake amount. Meena Shah, nutrition professor at Texas Christian University found that people who eat slowly do tend to eat less.
One Chinese study (using a secret camera to film volunteers when they ate pork pies) showed that the lean and obese men actually chewed at the same speed. But the obese men swallowed their food much more quickly. Of course, as we showed earlier this is a strain on digestion, but it may also be less enjoyable for every mouthful. After being filmed once, the volunteers repeated the eating on different occasions with 15 chews and another time with 40. When they chewed longer, whether slim or obese, they ate 11.9% fewer calories.
Some claim that slowing down the whole process, let’s you savor the taste of individual bites more and that the meal itself is more relaxed. Theory? More enjoyment.
Don’t Believe Prescriptions of How Many Times YOU must Chew
How many times must you chew? Well, headlines will give you an exact number (not always the same), but the real answer is the good ol’ stand-by of “it depends.” So what does it depend on?
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- What you eat makes a difference. Whole foods like fruits and vegetables will take more mastication than a processed cracker that almost melts in your mouth.
- Hard-to-digest foods (even bread) should be chewed as much as possible. That goes for all foods with high fiber as well.
- Bite Size. If I am eating one pistachio nut, 15 chews will really break it up. [I stopped to try that out while writing.] But if I have a hefty forkful from my dinner plate, 40 plus is probably necessary.
One Last Tip
We all have bad eating habits. Two of mine are eating late, and doing so in front of the TV. I am compensated somewhat by my tendency for slow/long chewing. None of us is going to change all our bad habits, but here is one to consider regarding meal and table preparation. It’s twofold.
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- Don’t put big bowls of food out on the table to allow continued eating or nibbling.
- Prepare your plate with less quantity than you imagine you want. After you have slowly eaten, if you really crave more, have seconds. In that case, 2nds are okay, but so are left-overs.
FINAL THOUGHT
It’s difficult to believe that there’s so much to say about chewing (and I left out a bunch that was on the tip of my tongue). The reason for providing as much info as I have is to encourage the belief that improved chewing is a small change with loads of benefits, little or no drawbacks – and it’s cheap and easy.
Mastication is a real low-hanging fruit when Aging with Pizzazz. Hope you’ll chew on it.
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Title Picture: dog chewing by Eszter Miller via Pixabay 3443624_
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