No need to go on a drastic diet to lose weight, it would be better to chew your food for a long time.
- To lose weight and digest better, it is advisable to bet on quality food but also to chew well.
- Oral stimuli, linked to the duration of food tasting and chewing, would increase energy expenditure after food intake.
Chewing is the first step in digestion. This action of grinding food is often overlooked. However, taking the time to chew food well can be beneficial for your health. This simple reflex allows food to be better assimilated and thus to digest well. Chewing properly could also promote weight loss. This was recently revealed by Japanese researchers in a study published in the journal Scientific Reports.
The scientists decided to carry out this research after making an observation. “Mastication is known to help prevent obesity, possibly by increasing the thermic effect of food consumption. Whether this is due to oral stimuli, i.e. the duration the taste of food in the mouth and the duration of chewing”, they noted.
Chewing well would increase energy expenditure
To uncover the effects of oral stimuli on diet-induced thermogenesis (the production of heat by living things), the researchers conducted their work with healthy people. They divided them into three groups. The first had to ingest liquid food. The second group held their food in their mouths for 30 seconds without chewing it. The other participants had to chew products for several seconds before swallowing them.
“Oral stimuli significantly increased diet-induced thermogenesis”, can we read in the results of the study. Clearly, oral stimuli, which are linked to the duration of food tasting and chewing, would increase energy expenditure after food intake.
“While the difference in energy expenditure per meal is small, the cumulative effect garnered over multiple meals, taken every day and 365 days a year, is substantial,” said Naoyuki Hayashi, author of the work and professor at Waseda University, Japan. The study authors concluded that chewing properly would lead to weight loss.
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