Chewing Food Decreases Appetite

Many dieters are continually looking for tips and tricks to help them to lose weight more quickly and easily. Among those techniques, they are often surprised to discover that suppressing the appetite can be as easy as chewing meals more thoroughly. The reason for this is that chewing food properly helps to decrease the appetite, so that you won’t need to eat as much in order to be satisfied and avoid hunger pangs.

There are several reasons for this. The first is quite simple. When you chew your food very thoroughly, it takes more time than it would if you simply mashed it down a few times and swallowed it as soon as it will fit down the pipe. This gives your stomach extra time to send your brain the signals that say that the food has arrived and that it is feeling filled up. Therefore, you will actually feel satisfied when you have legitimately had enough.

When you don’t chew your food well enough, you eat much more quickly and you can pack more food into your stomach before it has time to indicate to your brain that you have eaten enough.

The next reason is that when you chew your food more thoroughly, it makes it easier for your digestive system to break it down and absorb the nutrients from it. Thus, you will not only attain better nutrition from properly masticating your meals, but you will give your stomach ability to properly receive the body’s needs, allowing it to signal to the brain that it has had enough food in order to fulfill its nutritional requirement.

Very recently a study was performed on obese individuals regarding two peptides in the intestines that help to reduce appetite and food intake. The team from Ohu University in Koriyama, Japan explained that none of the participants in the study were diabetic, but that they discovered that when food was properly chewed, the process stimulated postprandial boosts of the two peptides, which are secreted by the L cells in the intestines.

The first of the peptides reduces the intake of food and stimulates the glucose dependent secretion of insulin. The second helps to reduce the appetite. The levels of both of these peptides increased significantly the more the participants chewed their food. Therefore, the more you chew your food, the more of these peptides you’ll have in your body and the faster you will become satisfied with smaller meals.