Eat Slowly, It’s Good For Your Mind!
Some of us have had our parents tell us to chew our food slower, especially if we are fast or greedy eaters. They say that chewing slower allows the food we eat to be digested faster, and tricks the brain into thinking we are full faster, compared to chewing and swallowing fast.
Eat Slowly, It’s Good For Your Mind!
Some of us have had our parents tell us to chew our food slower, especially if we are fast or greedy eaters. They say that chewing slower allows the food we eat to be digested faster, and tricks the brain into thinking we are full faster, compared to chewing and swallowing fast.
A new study is shedding light on the negative effects of chewing your food too fast, and its link to mental health and depression.
Let’s take a dive into what the study says.
The Study From Nagasaki University
Researchers from Nagasaki University were determined to find the correlation between speed eating and the mental health status among adolescents and young adults, ranging from 12 to 24 years old.
The study was done with 106 participants, who were asked to fill out a questionnaire in regards to their eating habits and how much they chewed before swallowing gummy bears.
The researchers used gummy bears as the glucose levels from the gummies after chewing could be tabulated in what researchers called a “swallowing threshold”. What they found was that participants with low swallowing thresholds were found to have chewed their food less, and were more likely to engage in risk averse behaviours or have poor mental health.
The Link Between Speed Eating And Obesity
The study found that those with higher BMI tended to chew less. The Nagasaki University researchers point to similar studies in the past that linked speed-eating to increased body fat, higher BMI, and a greater likelihood of being overweight or obese as adults.
The researchers note that there are many factors that interplay the correlation between speed-eating and poor physical and mental health, such as: parental upbringing, societal expectations, socioeconomic status as well as influence of peers.
They suspect that those with higher BMIs are more likely to suffer metabolic syndromes, which in turn influence their rate of chewing and overall eating habits. And as discussed in our previous articles, the link between poor physical health and poor mental health is often a determining factor.
Implications
While the study does not look into the factors that correlate speed eating with poor mental health, it is possible that those who chew faster are predisposed to poor mental health. People who are anxious may have poorer quality of chewing.
It should also be noted that those with anxiety disorders or depressive symptoms may have poorer quality of chewing due to the fact that anxiety is known to reduce appetite.
Vice versa, if a person has a habit of chewing less, it can subconsciously influence their mind to harbour more anxiety inducing thoughts.
The researchers found that speed-eaters also tended to have unhealthy habits, such as late-night snacking or sleep deprivation.
Conclusion
The study found that reduced chewing before swallowing is linked with risk behaviours for poor mental health.
In addition to this, the findings suggest that reduced chewing also has ties to lower sleep quality and overall mental and physical health.
So the next time you’re eating, always remember: it’s the little things that count, even chewing.
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