Right, that's why I say I think they're at least partially right. However, I can come up with a few other theories for why the opposite could be true as well.

Right, that's why I say I think they're at least partially right. However, I can come up with a few other theories for why the opposite could be true as well. Just off the top of my head: Whether the food you consume is burned immediately or stored as fat is regulated significantly by taste sensations, as evidenced by studies where people were forced to eat diets consistent of bland-tasting (but otherwise not especially healthy) food, and lost significant weight. Also, people who eat ad libitum will gain more weight than people who consume identical amounts of food through a gastro-nasal feeding tube. Studies on livestock have shown you can promote weight-gain by adding water to dry chow, which makes it taste better but obviously does not alter its nutritional content, even though the animals are fed the exact same quantity of chow. So, it's reasonable to at least suspect that doing something that increases the taste sensation of food, such as instructing people to chew longer before swallowing, might cause weight to increase. I don't know which of these is true with certainty. The evidence is still somewhat ambiguous.