Eating slowly offers many health benefits, both physical and mental. Let's take a look at the 4 benefits of "eating slowly".
Eating slowly helps you to chew properly. As you're no doubt aware, digestion begins in the mouth: the slower you eat, the better you chew and the easier it is for your stomach to work.
In fact, by chewing more, you facilitate the work of digestive enzymes. Instead of finding half-digested food in the large intestine, chewing allows food to be properly cut up for complete digestion. This is considered the first step in the transformation of food into nutrients. It's a very simple gesture, but one that is often overlooked.
Undigested food reaching the large intestine undergoes fermentation by bacteria, causing bloating, flatulence and sometimes even stomach ache.
Good chewing also increases saliva production, ensuring better oral hygiene as saliva neutralizes certain bacteria.
Eating slowly allows you to become aware of how much you've eaten and to feel fuller. If you eat too quickly, your brain doesn't have time to receive the satiety signal sent by your stomach, which takes an average of 20 minutes to arrive.
If you eat too quickly during these 20 minutes, you'll always feel hungry, even though your stomach is sufficiently full.
This discrepancy has several consequences: beyond the frustration it generates ("I'm hungry when I've finished my plate"), it tends to push us to eat much more than necessary.
A good understanding of satiety also helps avoid snacking during the day.
As the French proverb says: "Morceau avalé n'a plus de goût" ("A bite swallowed has no taste" ). On the other hand, taking the time to eat means taking the time to enjoy.
Flavor detection is made possible by the taste buds covering the tongue, so the slower you eat the food, the longer the flavors will remain in your mouth.
Let's not forget the psychological side. Eating slowly allows us to take time for ourselves and take a break from our 100-mile-an-hour lives. It's not only good for you, it's good for your stomach too!
Eating calmly is also a factor in good digestion, as it helpsavoid digestive spasms and bloating caused by stress.