Do you have a friend who just… INHALES their food? You know what I mean? Like, you've had
one bite and THEIR WHOLE BURRITO IS GONE? What are you doing, man? Did you even taste
it? Turns out, she probably didn't.
foodies Food is incredible. I love it. I love to eat
it, I love to cook it, I love shopping for the ingredients! There's nothing worse than
spending hours shopping, prepping, cooking, and serving, just to have someone scarf it
in three bites in seconds. And a new study confirms what I'd knew in my foodie heart…
people who eat super fast, don't taste their food; not really, anyway.
The study was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences under
the appetizing title, "Optimal directional volatile transport in retronasal olfaction,"
because science, while great at mise en place, has no sense of presentation. Translating
the title into layman: they wanted to know how smells got to our nose, from the outside
or the INSIDE. And their study found, the latter was actually more important. Our tongue
tastes five (maybe six) flavors, but food can have any number of smells to add to those
perceptions!
Using a model of the human mouth, throat and nasal cavities, researchers found when we
inhale through the nose, we create an "air curtain" which keeps volatile -- or airborne
-- molecules from going into the lungs. But, when we exhale, food volatiles trapped in
the back of the throat swirl upward into the nasal cavity, where we sense them with our
olfactory systems! If you eat fast, the air curtain doesn't form, the volatiles don't
have time to get trapped in the back of your throat, and thus you don't smell and taste
together! There's definitive science for slowing down to savor a meal, for sure.
Sometimes, you just want a good scarf, a satisfying guzzling of comforting carbohydrates can make
us feel really good once in a rare while, but making a habit of it is the dangerous.
This MAY be supported by a 2006 study of nearly 5000 people in the Journal of Epidemiology
which found, the rate of food intake heavily correlated with rate of obesity! And another
study in the Journal of American Dietetic Association discovered, when people eat fast,
they take in more calories, but feel less satisfaction from their meal! If you look
at how complicated our alimentary canal really is, this makes more than a mouthful of sense.
The stomach is a highly connected organ in the human body. It has a direct connection
along the vagus nerve right to the brain stem. When you put food in your belly, the stomach
has mucosa and muscles which detect the mechanical feel and overall volume of food, as well as
how much the stomach compressed or stretched. When it's empty, a hormone called ghrelin
is secreted -- called the hunger hormone, to trigger appetite. Once you eat, the stomach
stretches, and ghrelin is suppressed; causing your vagus nerve to signal your brain stem…
and that signal tells the intestinal train to get moving! Obviously, this is SUPER simplified,
there are hormones, enzymes and nerves being tripped and squirted all over the tube running
through the middle of your body, but like that corn you ate yesterday… let's try to
get through this in one piece.
Next, food moves into the intestine and another hormone called leptin comes into the picture.
Leptin is one piece of the nutrient satiation puzzle, the idea that what you're eating has
fulfilled your body's nutritional requirement. Scientists don't entirely understand the whole
thing, but they know, as food continues through the system, the ileum, colon and rectum will
cause secretion of MORE hormones called PYY. A 2006 study found, when mice were deprived
of PYY, they wouldn't control their intake, and became obese! So scientists figure, PYY
(along with all these other hormones, nerves and triggers) eventually work together to
tell your brain OKAY Y'ALL. WE'RE GOOD DOWN HERE. STOP EATING. [[whew!!]] Complicated,
no?
It's important to be cognizant of the fact, humans are not robots. Many people try and
control every aspect of their lives, including eating to take in calories, but being mindful
of WHAT you're eating, is just as important as HOW you're eating. When we eat like a machine,
our body doesn't have time to suppress or secrete these myriad of compounds, or trigger
these processes. It takes time for this sack of meat to know when it's got food in it!
So, science says it's best to eat slowly. You'll taste your food better, you'll decrease
your portion sizes, and feel better about what you've eaten! You might even lose weight!
Don't eat TOO slow… if you eat so slow that you stop eating altogether you'd eventually
die. Eventually… ever curious about what would happen in between? So was I! How long
could we survive without food or water? Don't worry, we DNewsed
it.
Do you eat fast? Why? Don't tell me you're punching your brother or sister for a seat
at the table. Think about it for a second and answer with something introspective, why
do you think eat at the speed you eat?