Nutrition rules >>>> Why eat slowly?

Why eat slowly?

The rule of conduct at the dinner table is to eat slowly and silently. Why is it so established?

It's all about the quality of chewing pieces of food and their gradual administration to the digestive tract, where special receptors record the degree of filling of the stomach and thereby protect the body from overeating, which is no less harmful than starvation. With the eyes, a person is able to "eat" a lot, but the possibilities for processing the volume of food in the body are strictly limited by the size of the stomach and intestines.

Why eat slowly? The simple answer to this question is to feel what you have eaten, because food is one of the ways to enjoy life itself. But if we talk about the benefits of slow eating, then it directly determines the health of the digestive tract, and, consequently, the whole organism. Almost 80% of all acquired chronic diseases in various organ systems are the result of poor functioning of the gastrointestinal tract.

When food is absorbed uncontrollably, in a hurry, a person can swallow a lot of food, but the stomach is not able to contain all of them.

An overcrowded stomach begins to stretch, create pressure on neighboring organs, and thereby complicates not only the processes of evacuation of food from the stomach into the intestines, but also creates a general feeling of malaise - it is difficult to breathe, it is difficult to move, a feeling of heaviness in the stomach appears, and many may experience urge to vomit.

If you eat quickly, then you do not have time to thoroughly chew the food, and the human dentition is designed precisely for thorough chewing up to a mushy state, otherwise gastric enzymes cannot cope with large pieces of food, which, accordingly, will leave the stomach in an undigested form, will not be absorbed in the intestine and can create prerequisites for constipation and colitis, as well as intestinal obstruction. The most serious condition from excessive and uncontrolled chewing of food consumption is a cracked stomach, so a bursting stomach or, as they say in the people, “the belly burst” is not a fairy tale, but the reality of fast filling of the stomach with undigested food.

Undigested or poorly digested food is one hundred percent chance of depriving the body of the substances necessary for life. We eat for fun, of course, and the body's job is to maintain its vitality through our food pleasures.

To eat slowly, you must eat in silence. When talking at moments of food intake, a person switches his attention from chewing to his thoughts and their presentation, and ceases to control the chewing process, or rather the chewing time. Since it is inconvenient to speak with a mouth full of food, a swallowing movement is instinctively made, and everything that has not been chewed is sent to the esophagus, which is often also injured by large pieces of food swallowed from the minima of softening. Chronic injury to the esophagus is a direct route to esophageal cancer.

Talking while eating also contributes to the swallowing of portions of air - hence belching and flatulence. And the most unfortunate coincidence of circumstances is when, during a conversation, a piece of food falls "into the wrong throat", or rather the respiratory reflex does not have time to work and hold its breath when swallowed, so the piece gets into the respiratory tract, and if you are lucky, you can reflexively cough it up, and if no - then death from suffocation is guaranteed. The statistics of fatalities due to ingestion of food in the respiratory tract suggests that such tragedies occur precisely at moments of eating, interspersed with conversations.

How long does it take to chew a portion of food in your mouth? Uncontrollably, a person chews no more than five times and swallows, but to maintain and increase health, it is necessary to chew at least 9 times, and a maximum of 30 times or more. The longer the food is chewed, the healthier the digestive tract and the less the body needs to eat to satisfy the feeling of hunger.

The same principle is followed for those who wish to lose weight without dieting. There is no need to starve - just carefully consider what you eat during the meal period, count the number of chews and focus on the taste, rather than the rate of absorption of food from the plate.