Life in our modern age can be rather hectic, and sometimes you have no choice but to grab
a meal on the go.
Other times all you want to do is shove food down your face hole as fast as possible so
you can move on.
Even our entertainment demands that we eat fast, like to that next match of Fortnite
because your team is waiting on you and they’re getting pretty sick of you being afk.
As problems with digestive health and obesity become more prevalent, it's clear that our
fast-paced food consumption is creating serious problems for us, problems that might just
be fixed by us eating slower.
In global obesity rankings, Spain sits at number 62, with 23.8% of the population being
obese versus the United States, where it’s 36.2% of the population.
While there are a variety of factors to explain this difference, it appears to be that Spain's
eating culture is a leading cause for this disparity between the two modern and industrialized
nations.
In Spain the typical meal can take at least an hour, and is seen as a social affair to
be enjoyed with coworkers and family- yes, even midday lunches can run for a full hour,
if not more.
Family dinners tend to be late in the day and can last as long as two hours, especially
when they involve large gatherings of family members or friends as they often do.
Spain's social eating culture drags out the process of eating in comparison with the United
States, where the average meal is scarfed down as quickly as possible.
In 2011 the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a group of thirty four mostly
western countries, did a study on the eating habits of their member states and the domestic
lives of their populations.
The study found that Americans spend far less time eating than any other nation, with just
one hour and fourteen minutes a day dedicated to the task of shoveling food into our mouths
versus the average of one hour and forty one minutes for the rest.
But how big of a deal is it that other nations eat far slower than us?
And just why should we learn to pace ourselves with our food?
Does it really matter?
Well, as it turns out, yes!
And the benefits are many.
The main reason for eating slowly has to do with our body's basic biological functions.
Your brain is an incredible organ capable of lightning-fast calculations, yet strangely
we evolved so that a signal from your stomach to your brain saying, “hey I'm pretty full
up on food here,” takes on average a whopping twenty minutes.
That's a grand distance of about two and a half feet for most people, and that's a pretty
infuriating thought for people struggling with weight gain when you consider that neurons
transmit signals at a speed of .5 milliseconds.
For the record, it takes you between three hundred and four hundred milliseconds to blink
an eye.
Your brain is basically The Flash, sending and receiving signals from every part of your
body at blazing speeds- but when it comes to the double cheeseburger with an extra order
of fries you just scarfed down because you felt like you were starving, your brain turns
into a sloth on a bicycle with a flat tire.
But if you eat slow enough that your tortoise brain has a chance to recognize it, you’ll
soon feel like you’re no longer starving and will probably stop throwing those fistfuls
of french fries fried in pure trans fats down your gullet.
Feeling full will prevent you from overeating, which directly leads to slowing down or halting
weight gain from unnecessary calories.
Yet as annoying as this little brain hack is in our modern lives, it’s in fact a life
saver from back in the days before civilization and the all important fast food restaurant
were on every corner.
Before civilization and all its modern and delicious fast food conveniences, we didn't
always know where our next meal was coming from.
Therefore stuffing ourselves to the point of literal bursting became an evolutionary
prerogative, because back then it was good to be fat, as fat could be burned during times
when food was scarce which was something like ninety nine percent of the time because it
really sucked to be alive back then.
Thus it's likely we evolved with such a slow stomach trigger so that we were able to overeat
and ensure that we would pack away precious pounds of fat for when food resources became
scarce.
What likely saved the lives of your ancestors is now helping add unnecessary and unwanted
pounds to your waistline, because even though technology has made us masters of most of
our world, nature still has its ways of letting you know that it hates you.
Deeply.
Eating slowly can do more than just benefit your health though, it also helps with food
satisfaction.
When we researched for this episode we found a lot of feel-good new age'y mumbo jumbo about
food satisfaction making your soul feel good, or 'connecting you to your food and thus enhancing
nutrition'.
That's not how science works, so we mostly disregarded it all- but it turns out there's
one really good reason to worry about food satisfaction.
That has to do with laboratory developed, processed foods, which are made to taste especially
good when eaten quickly because when eaten slowly you start to notice that the flavors
really just don't hold up.
This makes sense when you think about it.
Certain processed foods are a hodge podge of dozens of different elements all trying
to blend together to create nice flavors, and the slower you eat them the more that
careful blend falls apart in your mouth and starts to taste like, well, like a hodge podge
of dozens of different elements.
Many natural foods though like fruits maintain their flavor for far longer, even when eaten
slowly.
This might not seem like a big deal, until you start to think about the fact that if
you develop a habit to eat slower, you're naturally going to start avoiding foods that
taste terrible when eaten slowly and which also happen to be the same ones that are terrible
for your health.
Eating slower will prompt you towards more natural, healthier foods and away from highly
processed things like flavored potato chips or candy bars- and all the sugar, fat, and
calories that come along with them.
We hear you though, we were skeptical too, which is why we have a mini challenge for
you.
Next time you're at a gas station, go ahead and buy yourself a pack of those wrapped-up
chocolate donuts, the small ones.
Then pop one in your mouth and go ahead and chew it for about ten seconds and tell us
how you feel.
Unless you have the taste buds of a goat you're going to start feeling pretty gross after
about the fifth second.
So you see now why many snacks like this are purposefully small.
They trick you into eating more, and thus buying more, but also into eating them quickly.
You can even try it with a twinkie, which even we admit at first glance seems to be
one of mankind's finest creations.
But pop one of those into your mouth for a good ten seconds and see how you feel about
yourself afterwards.
So just eat slower and you'll naturally want to eat healthier foods.
It makes a lot of basic sense.
Eating slowly also has a direct benefit on your digestion.
Now, we realize that most of our audience is younger and the idea of improving your
digestion is laughable and a 100% non-concern.
Oh boy, we literally can't wait for you to get into your thirties, we have such terrible,
horrible wonders to show you.
You might have a bulletproof gut right now, but believe us that's not going to last.
You're getting older every day, the grains of life slowly but inexorably slipping through
your fingers and ushering you ever-forward to your inevitable death- and bad digestion.
So you should really start building good habits now or you’ll spend a significant amount
of your limited time on this earth squatting over the toilet.
When you sit down for a meal your body starts going into digestion mode almost immediately.
First your mouth starts salivating so that enzymes in your saliva can break food down
and moisten it, which makes it easier to slide that barbecue bacon cheeseburger down your
throat.
Our stomach gets the signal that food is incoming and starts to secrete more stomach acids to
help further break food down and push it through into the intestines.
For its part, the small intestine starts prepping itself for peristalsis, or the muscle contractions
that help push food along.
When you sit down and rush a meal, you're basically throwing food into a digestive system
that isn't quite ready to deal with it yet.
Fast, large bites means that food is inadequately chewed, which is actually a pretty big deal
because it makes it more difficult for that food to be turned into chyme- the liquid mix
of digested food, hydrochloric acid, digestive enzymes and water.
When your stomach doesn't have time to properly digest food it can lead to constipation, acid
reflux, and spontaneous combustion from the build up of gasses.
We made one of those up, but we’re not telling you which, because we care about you and want
you to be healthier- even if it’s through sheer terror.
If you're still skeptical about the benefits of eating slowly, consider a University of
Rhode Island study where researchers served lunch on two different occasions to thirty
normal-weight women.
The meal in both cases was a huge plate of pasta with sauce and parmesan cheese, along
with a glass of water.
At each meal the researchers asked the women to eat to the point of comfortable fullness,
but on the first visit they were told to eat as quickly as possible, while on the second
they were asked to eat slowly and put down their utensils between bites.
The difference between eating fast and slowly came out to 646 calories in 9 minutes versus
579 calories in 29 minutes, or 67 calories.
Spread that out across three meals and that adds up to a significant amount of extra calories
per day making you gain weight.
Also, the women who ate quickly reported feeling hungrier an hour later than those who ate
slowly, so not only are you consuming more calories, but you're creating a greater temptation
to add extra calories from snacks and junk food.
So how can you change your current eating habits and start to eat slower, and healthier?
As usual, we've got your back.
Be social.
Making your meal a social experience can help extend the amount of time it takes to actually
eat that meal.
Friendly conversation helps keep food out of your mouth provided you don’t talk while
you chew which we could do an entire other video about.
2.
Change your eating environment.
Instead of scarfing down pizza in front of your computer, sit down at the dining room
table like a real human being.
Something as simple as changing your environment can make you more mindful of the food you're
eating, and help you eat slower.
3.
Count your chews.
As you chew, count the number of times your mouth goes up and down, which we admit sounds
super annoying but research shows it can help lose weight by increasing the calories the
body burns during digestion.
4.
Drink water between bites.
Not only does it physically slow you down, but it helps you feel fuller faster, which
will limit the amount of food you ultimately eat.
5.
Move to North Korea.
Eating food in North Korea is illegal so you won't even have to worry about eating slower.
Now that you've learned all about how eating slower can be a huge health benefit, do you
think you'll be more mindful about the way you eat?
Also, make sure you check out our other video, this is why you’re fat!!
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