Every night I sat down to dinner with my parents and two older brothers growing up, my father was the last one to leave the table. The four of us would scarf down our plates before my father even had a chance to scratch the surface.
My father was raised in a house that required him to chew each mouthful 10 times before swallowing. Apparently, that wisdom didn’t get passed down to his children. A shame, seeing that two new studies by researchers at the University of Rhode Island found further evidence linking slow eating to a reduction in food intake.
“The studies found that men eat significantly faster than women, heavier people eat faster than slimmer people, and refined grains are consumed faster than whole grains, among other findings,” according to a release on the study.
Kathleen Melanson, URI associate professor of nutrition, along with graduate students Emily Ponte and Amanda Petty found that fast eaters consumed about 3.1 ounces of food per minute, medium-speed eaters consumed 2.5 ounces per minute, and slow eaters consumed 2 ounces per minute.
The team also found differences in calorie consumption across gender -- men consumed 80 calories per minute at lunch while women consumed 52 calories per minute at lunch -- while the men felt they were eating slowly and the women self-reported that they were eating quickly.
"One theory we are pursuing is that fast eating may be related to greater energy needs, since men and heavier people have higher energy needs," said Melanson.
The overarching theme here is that if you eat slower, you consume less food and ultimately, fewer calories. And in the day and age when obesity in American is running rampant -- the Centers for Disease Control estimates 1/3 of all U.S. adults are obese -- eating slower would seem a positive step in the fight against obesity.
But researchers in the Netherlands published a study in March 2011 that found people maintained their high-caloric snacking habits after meals regardless of how slowly or quickly they consumed their food.
Sofie G. Lemmens, a postdoctoral fellow at Maastricht University in the Netherlands who was the lead author of a paper published in the March issue of The Journal of Nutrition, said that regardless of the pace at which people consumed meals or how full people were, they maintained their post-meal snacking habits.
The group who ate a more staggered, drawn-out meal had hormone levels indicating they were full. The group who ate their meal more quickly, had a more rapid spike in hormones signaling they were hungry again sooner. But both groups ate the sweet and salty tea snacks after their meal -- no matter their hunger level -- suggesting the availability of tempting foods overrides the body’s internal messages about when to stop eating, according to Dr. Lemmens.
“The food environment is overriding all the biological cues,” said Kelly Brownell, director of the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale, who blames what he calls a “toxic food environment” for the prevalence of obesity.
He added, “Whatever biological safeguards there are against weight gain are being disabled, almost like someone went in and changed all the wiring.”
Melanson and her team from URI plan to study specific slow-eating techniques to see how they may affect appetite and weight loss and she also plans to examine other factors that might influence eating rate in daily life.
So while it sounds a simple enough solution to slow one’s eating and ultimately reduce caloric intake, there may be larger biological and environmental factors at play.
Sources:
Researcher provides further evidence that slow eating reduces food intake. EurekAlert. Web. 7 Nov. 2011.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-11/uori-rpf110811.php
Leisurely Meals Don’t Curb Snacking, Study Finds. NYTimes.com. Web. 10 Nov. 2011.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/08/health/nutrition/08eat.html?_r=1&hpw
Overweight and Obesity; U.S. Obesity Trends. Centers for Disease Control. Web. 10 Nov. 2011.
http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/trends.html
Bailey Mosier is a freelance journalist living in Orlando, Florida. She received a Masters of Journalism from Arizona State University, played D-I golf, has been editor of a Scottsdale-based golf magazine and currently contributes to GolfChannel.com. She aims to live an active, healthy lifestyle full of sunshine and smiles.
Reviewed November 10, 2011
by Michele Blacksberg RN
Edited by Jody Smith