Speeding and Feeding

Think Fast. Live Slow.

That phrase is emboldened on the heel of my clogs. Yeah, it’s just a slogan, but it’s a slogan worthy of emulating – particularly in a world that’s constantly on the go.
It isn’t always easy to ‘live slow,’ but one way to do so is at mealtime. Food is meant to be enjoyed, and there’s no better way to enjoy food than by cherishing every bite and morsel instead of wolfing it down with nary a chew.

Slowing down when eating will bring more enjoyment to mealtime, but it will also bring a greater sense of satisfaction and fullness. It takes the brain a good twenty minutes to recognize when the body is full or not. By eating too quickly, you’re not giving the body enough time to decipher whether or not it is, in fact, full. What results from frenetic feedings are a lot of bloated tummies and loosened belt-buckles in the short-term. But if such speed eating continues, you might as well buy yourself a bigger belt that will fit that perpetually bloated tummy.

I say that based on science, but also based on some Japanese researchers study that involved interviewing 3,000 volunteers about their eating habits. According to their study, published in the British Medical Journal, about half of the respondents, men and women, said they ate until they were full. Regarding how quickly they tended to eat, about 45 percent of the men said they ate “quickly” and about 36 percent of the women said they ate “quickly.” The participants were between the ages of 30 and 69.

The combination of these answers – eating quickly and eating until full – revealed a troublesome similarity. Because those who did both of these things were three times more likely to be overweight when compared to those who did not eat quickly or until full.

The researchers speculate the link between obesity and speed eating is associated with the prevalence of fast food, a proclivity to eat cheaper foods like pasta and breads and the tendency to mindlessly eat, such as what happens when eating in front of the television set.

I don’t dispute their findings. Fast food is, well, fast, and in a society that’s constantly on the go, the fastest foods are unfortunately the least nutritious. And there is an awful lot of eating in front of the television set these days when it ought to be done at the kitchen table.

But what the researchers fail to mention is that by speed eating, the body can’t register when it’s full. So people eat and eat and eat without putting down their fork or spoon or sandwich, only to feel extremely uncomfortable upon completion.

That uncomfortability goes away after an hour or two, of course, but the excess calories that accrue through fast eating won’t. Not easily, anyway.

Slow down. Enjoy every bite. Count your bites if you have to. It will wind up saving you a lot of calories and even more negative health effects that come from obesity.