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Magazine
EAT SMART
Slow and steady
MEETA LALL
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A few extra minutes at each meal can have major benefits.
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Photo: G.P. SAMPATH KUMAR
Throw your mind over the last one week. How many times do you remember eating your food in a hurry? My guess is: quite a few. Indeed, hectic schedules have made speed-eating a particularly common habit. Breakfast is a rushed affair, lunch is gulped down in a few enormous bites and, by dinner-time, one is too hungry and tired to spend much time on it.
But why is eating slowly so important? Because the speed with which we eat affects the amount of food we eat, the type of food we eat, and further, the way in which nutrients are absorbed and distributed throughout the body.
Motivation
Perhaps the biggest motivation for eating more slowly is that slow eating helps in weight loss. A growing number of studies confirm that just by eating slower, we consume fewer calories; in fact, enough to lose 8-10 kg a year without doing or eating anything different. The reason is that it takes about 20 minutes for our stomach to tell the brain: I am full. When we eat fast, by the time our brain tells us to stop, we are not only ‘satisfied’; we are ‘stuffed’. If we eat slowly, we have time to realise we are full, and stop on time.
When Kathleen Melanson at the University of Rhode Island asked a group of college-age women to eat a meal of pasta with sauce and cheese, she found that fast eaters consumed 646 calories in nine minutes! On another occasion, when these women were asked to eat the same meal slowly, they consumed 579 calories in 27 minutes; about 70 per cent fewer calories per minute! This also explains why the French habit of slow eating keeps them thin despite their love for rich creams, cheeses, cakes, butters and breads.
Eating slowly also provides a greater sense of fullness. In Kathleen Melanson’s study, when the women ate fast, they were less satisfied and hungrier just one hour after the meal as compared to when they ate slowly. Also, eating slowly gives us time to appreciate the appearance, smell, taste and texture of food and we enjoy the meal more. Moreover, food gets chewed well and digested better.
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Tips to eat slow
Lay the table and sit down to eat.
Take a few deep breaths before you start eating.
Try to spend at least 20 minutes at the table. Put bite-size pieces of food in your mouth.
Put your spoon down after each bite. Chew it well (32 times, as our ancestors said ) before swallowing it.
Talking between bites helps eat slowly. If you are eating alone, read or listen to music.
Eat before you get ridiculously hungry; otherwise it will be hard to eat slowly.
Don’t watch TV while eating. Don’t eat in the car. Never eat on your feet.
The writer, a Nutrition and Health researcher, is the author of The Power of N: Nutrition In Our Times.
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