Chewing food thoroughly reduces the risk of obesity

Researchers from Osaka University (Japan) studied the relationship between the speed of food consumption, the feeling of satiety and overweight. Slightly less than half of the three thousand participants in the study said that they usually eat very quickly.

The probability of gaining excess weight for men who are accustomed to quickly absorb food is 84% compared to people who eat "with feeling, sense, arrangement." For women, this risk is twice as high. And those who eat quickly and do not stop until they feel that they have had enough, the risk of getting better is more than three times! The results of the study are published in the British Medical Journal.

According to Professor Ian MacDonald, a nutritionist at the University of Nottingham, the reasons for this lie in the failure of the signaling system, which should warn the body about when to stop eating. The habit of eating quickly "knocks down" the normal operation of the signaling system, which should transmit a signal to the brain to stop eating when the stomach is full. "If you eat fast, the stomach fills up faster than the digestive system is able to produce the right signal. Consequently, the stomach is most often overloaded," he says.

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

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. He gave an advantage to people who managed to grab more food in conditions when there was not enough. According to them, children should be taught to eat slowly and allowed to leave food on their plate if they feel that they can no longer.

Jason Halford, director of the Digestion Laboratory at the University of Liverpool, notes that researchers on the causes of obesity are increasingly paying attention to people's eating behavior. During the study, the results of which were published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology, he found that the anti–obesity drug sibutramine slows down the rate of food consumption by patients. "Japanese scientists have shown that differences in people's eating behavior are associated with overeating and obesity. In another study, it was found that children also eat fast at an early age. This suggests that such a predisposition may be genetic or acquired in childhood," said Jason Halford. However, he notes that scientists have not yet found evidence that attempts to teach children to eat slowly reduce their risk of obesity in the future.

Portal "Eternal youth" www.vechnayamolodost.ru according to the materials of the BBC 24.10.2008