Why chewing your food properly is important for your overall health and wellbeing

Did you know that you should chew your food a minimum 15 times before swallowing. In some cases upwards of 30-40 times! When it comes to chewing your food a good rule of thumb is to chew till food has turned to liquid and well-mixed with saliva; a piece of hard vegetable will take longer to be chewed properly compared to a piece of soft fruit.

There are 4 key benefits to chewing food properly that increases overall health and wellbeing. Let’s go through them:

• Enables the right amount of food eaten

Research has shown that chewing food slowly and thoroughly can help a person feel full faster. In a recent study, women who ate fast consumed more calories, and felt less full than those who ate slower and chewed their food correctly. Similarly, in a study by Iowa State University, researchers found that subjects that chewed their food more reported lowered appetite.

When your food is turned to liquid before entering the stomach, your body is able to digest your food faster and more efficiently, allowing faster nutrient absorption and a wonderful sense of fullness because your body is satisfied.

• Throat care

When we eat, food is chewed to an appropriate particle size, mixed with saliva and rolled into a smooth shape by the tongue, before we swallow. This ball of food is formally called the bolus. If food isn’t chewed to a proper particle size, or still has sharp and hard edges (imagine chewing potato chips fast!), the bolus may harm the throat when swallowing, or the bolus might come apart.

As chewing, swallowing and breathing in humans are intricately linked, eating fast may lead to choking or the food harming the throat grazing it on it’s way down. This is when infection can occur within the throat.

• To promote optimum digestion

Digestion starts in the mouth, as saliva contains enzymes to break down starch and fats. By chewing your food properly, you allow the digestive process to start even before your food reaches the stomach. After swallowing, food particles reach the stomach to be broken down and digested by the acidic gastric juices. Chemistry tells us that the larger the surface area to volume ratio a particle is, the quicker it is eroded and in this case, digested. Conversely, large particles make be difficult to break down, which slows down your digestion, and can slow down your metabolism over time.