Chewing Your Food 35 Times Can Apparently Control Your Weight

By
Wilson Xie
-

Last Updated on 2023-05-14 , 12:43 pm

Have you heard of the latest fad?

That would be chewing your food 35 times in order to control weight gain.

As ludicrous as it sounds, it could be real.

Mindfulness

According to a report, “mindfulness – defined as “a mental state or attitude in which one focuses one’s awareness on the present moment” – has become embedded into our everyday language.”

I can attest to that as I’ve heard this phrase being used a lot.

Mindfulness has been said to help people manage depression and anxieties as it helps one to extricate oneself from his/her predicament and to look at the larger picture at hand.

In vary degrees, this help alleviate a sense of helplessness and allows for re-calibration of ones thoughts and emotions.

Mindfulness though, has now extended its cognitive arm to the realms of eating.

Are you at peace yet? Or should I say pieces?

Mindful Eating

According to the article:

“Mindful eating encourages people to pay attention to food with all of their senses, noticing the physical and emotional responses that take place before, during and after an eating experience. Mindful eating teaches people to use wisdom to guide eating decisions, acknowledge food preferences non-judgementally and recognise physical hunger cues.”

While that sounds like a huge load of mumbo-jumbo to me, “Eating mindfully is also said to help reduce, emotional eating and promotes the consumption of smaller portions and fewer calories” by “correcting [ones] attitudes towards “good” and “bad” foods.”

Tracing back to the “late Victorian era and the work of the US health food enthusiast Horace Fletcher,” Fletcher argued that “head digestion” (a person’s emotional state when eating) played a significant role in their food choices.

He had advised that each mouthful of food should be chewed 32 times (one for each tooth) for maximum and physical well-being.

He then crafted what seemed to me like the Ten Commandments of Eating.

First: Wait for a true, earned appetite.

Second: Select from the food available that appeals most to appetite, and in the order called for by appetite.

Third: Get all the good taste there is in food out of it in the mouth, and swallow only when it practically “swallows itself”.

Fourth: Enjoy the good taste for all it is worth, and do not allow any depressing or diverting thought to intrude upon the ceremony.

Fifth: Wait; take and enjoy as much as possible what appetite approves; nature will do the rest.

Like faith though, you read what you will into it and heed as much as your heart’s desire or brain understands.

And like being his very own God, the act of this early version of mindful eating became known as “fletcherising”.

The Science Behind It

In recent times though, “similarities between mindful eating and Fletcherism have led researchers to test the effectiveness of 35 versus 10 chews per mouthful of food.”

The crux is that “higher chewing counts reduce food intake, as they result in the production of lower levels of the hormone ghrelin which stimulates appetite.”

The piece then goes on to say this makes “a person more wakeful to their food choices and feel more in control of their eating.”

At the end of all these, I’m sorry though, the science spoke.

It would make sense that a slow chew will result in your eating lesser due to lower levels of appetite-inducing hormones, and not to mention that there is a physical and undeniable sense/feeling of being suffused with food.

So, the only sort of mindful eating I will practise is really the sort of liao I want in my Cai Peng. 

I don’t think I need to be in ‘positive headspace’ and consciously count my chews in order to achieve some sort of weight control via eating

I mean it just means, chew and eat slower right?

Or best still, watch your diet, eat healthy foods, and/or avoid snacking.

That, my Mum and Dad has told me umpteenth time: “Eat slowly lah boy.”

I’ll bet you they weren’t mindful of mindful eating for all the profound wisdom it promises to be.

Featured Image: Akaranan / Shutterstock.com (Image is for illustration purpose only)

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Wilson Xie
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