9 ms·

The title appears to be wrong. Chewing more increases insulin concentration: Meanwhile, plasma concentrations of glucose (P= 0·024), insulin (P< 0·001) and G

The title appears to be wrong. Chewing more increases insulin concentration: Meanwhile, plasma concentrations of glucose (P= 0·024), insulin (P< 0·001) and GIP (P< 0·001) were higher following the forty-chews meal." Doesn't this suggest that if you want to eat a lot of food but don't want to absorb too much of it (i.e., are concerned about weight gain), you should chew less?

xenonite 6y ago
Indeed, the hacker news title appears to be wrong. But your conclusion and the paper's title is right: "Increasing the number of masticatory cycles is associated with reduced appetite and __altered__ postprandial plasma concentrations of gut hormones, insulin and glucose" One may also add (2012) to the title.
- James_Henry 6y ago
  I wouldn't say that the parenthetical in the comment you are responding to is correct: > Doesn't this suggest that if you want to eat a lot of food but don't want to absorb too much of it (i.e., are concerned about weight gain), you should chew less? In the study they found that more chewing was correlated with higher satiety and lower food intake in the follow up meal. This may show that if you are concerned about weight gain you should chew more and then you'll naturally eat less.
  - xenonite 6y ago
    Yes, I also think that the raised question is really something worthy to explore, especially in the long run.
  - tootie 6y ago
    But is it higher satiety because your body is absorbing more nutrients? In that case, it seems to be a wash. Chewing slowly just means you can get by with less volume of food.
hliyan 6y ago
This has always been my intuition: more time for the enzymes in saliva to work, and finer particles and more surface area for stomach acids to attack means faster digestion. Which in turn means a steeper rise in blood sugar.
- SiVal 6y ago
  But then, it takes longer to chew more. Your reasoning about finer particles has always been my intuition, too, but taking more time to chew while exposing more food surface area to digestive action ought to mean that your blood sugar will rise to the point where you are no longer hungry after fewer bites. You may tend to stop eating after consuming less food, so the total excess insulin (how much overage for how long) may be reduced. Or it may increase, or it may go one way for some foods/people and the opposite for others. Another intuition of mine is that when we finally have realtime monitoring of blood sugar (some future Apple Watch, for example) and exactly what was eaten when, we will discover to our "surprise" that there is so much variation in individual response to consumption of the same quantity of the same food (and even variation for the same person at different times of day and variation for what else was eaten and when) that it will be obvious why nutritional studies based on the usual averaging of crowds never seemed to converge on the right answer. Some averages are meaningless.
  - hliyan 6y ago
    > but taking more time to chew while exposing more food surface area to digestive action ought to mean that your blood sugar will rise to the point where you are no longer hungry That's an interesting take! You're probably right.
  - collyw 6y ago
    Even slow chewing is going to be quick relative to digestion by stomach acids, no? (Is anyone working on non invasive blood sugar monitoring?)
    - jl2718 6y ago
      I’ve seen several attempts at optical monitors. The first I became aware of was Agamatrix in early 2000s. I doubt this is possible without some kind of catalyst. There’s just nothing all that unique about the composition or phonon modes of sugar or insulin. There are other fluids aside from blood though. I think those have promise. Google X was working on a CGM in a contact lens. Maybe somebody is working on a CGM in dental roots. Gastric sensors may be just as good.
dmos62 6y ago
Anecdotally, I think chewing more brings satiation sooner, so you eat less. When we're really famished, we eat fast with less mastication. It's like you forget to chew. Consciously chewing more might bring you out of that devouring mode. Just speculating.
refurb 6y ago
This seems much more intuitive. The more you chew, the greater the surface area, the more rapidly carbohydrates are released or hydrolyzed by enzymes. If you were to swallow a grape whole, you'd probably pass it whole as well and none of the carbohydrates would be released.
- dotancohen 6y ago
  Experiment in progress. I'll report back in 24 hours, or however long the grape takes to travel my innards.
  - jackric 6y ago
    The world thanks you for contributions to science
  - 14 6y ago
    As a parent the thought of you sticking a whole grape into your mouth and swallowing it terrifies me. Don’t tell your mother. This reminds me of a couple things one being the monkeys that eat coffee beans then poop them out to be gathered and used by humans and my dad also tells me a story about a seed people were desperate to try and grow. Everything they tried failed and the seeds would not germinate. Then one day the researchers was in a foreign part of the world and saw a painting that had a Dodo bird under the same tree eating the seeds. Something sparked a thought in the persons head and they decided to take the seeds and feed it to their turkey. Apparently after the turkey at the seeds and pooped them out they would germinate. This also reminds me of how forest trees need fires to release their seeds it seems like nature required an animal to eat these seeds and travel with them before pooping them out into some ready made soil ready to start the plant. Good luck with your grape
  - jackric 6y ago
    Well?
    - dotancohen 6y ago
      Still no grape in the stool.
heisenbit 6y ago
Which makes perfectly sense. Stronger signal glucose is coming and quicker uptake of glucose as the pieces are smaller and have bigger surface.
m463 6y ago
That makes lots more sense, especially in the context of highly processed food (which is basically mechanically chewed into dust)
tartoran 6y ago
If you chew less not as much will fit in your stomach and will feel full quicker. Digestion would also be quicker. Not sure about the sugar level though
- JaumeGreen 6y ago
  On my experience is the other way around. When I eat fast I can eat a lot, when I manage to eat slowly the hunger subsides with less meal consumed.
  - toxik 6y ago
    I can eat when I’m full too, I do that a lot actually. It’s entertainment to some extent.
    - toxik 6y ago
      Fascinating, downvoted for an observation on how I and a lot of people see food.
hutzlibu 6y ago
"Doesn't this suggest that if you want to eat a lot of food but don't want to absorb too much of it (i.e., are concerned about weight gain), you should chew less?" Erm, did you never noticed how some food like corn comes out on the toilet pretty much unchanged(and therefore not digested) if you ate in a hurry before? So obviously yes, even without complex chemical analysis your theory seems to be right.
- NhanH 6y ago
  What comes out is the corn shell, which looks like corn unless you poke at it. Source: I poked at it.
  - brodouevencode 6y ago
    For science, of course.
  - reddotX 6y ago
    EWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW
  - smichel17 6y ago
    Nice! Meant genuinely -- I thought this was very much in the "intellectual curiosity" spirit that this site purports to be interested in.
    - ssully 6y ago
      Move fast and poke shit?
  - creaghpatr 6y ago
    This needs it's own separate scientific investigation.
    - Zenst 6y ago
      Agreed - definitely https://www.improbable.com/ig-about/ https://www.improbable.com/ig-about/ science material and possible future winner in the making right there.
aaronscott 6y ago
Thank you for posting this! This physician summarized studies[0] that showed that blended food spiked insulation vs. the same food that was chewed. His information seemed solid, so this title was surprising to see. 0 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMO-5mq3crU&t=16s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMO-5mq3crU&t=16s
- sachdevap 6y ago
  FYI, typo: you wrote "insulation" instead of "insulin".
  - aaronscott 6y ago
    Haha amazing. I guess I was still waking up. It's too late to edit so I must leave the mistake for all to see. Thanks for pointing it out though.
nyghtly 6y ago
Yes; however, if our concern is weight gain, then I believe that this passage is more important: > Compared with fifteen chews, chewing forty times per portion resulted in lower hunger (P= 0·009), preoccupation with food (P= 0·005) and desire to eat (P= 0·002). If you chew more, then you will feel fuller by the time you finish your meal. That feeling could be the difference between over-eating (going back for another helping), and mindful eating (stopping because you are full).
- vram22 6y ago
  > That feeling could be the difference between over-eating (going back for another helping), and mindful eating (stopping because you are full). IIRC, a yoga book I read said that you should stop eating when you still feel slightly hungry - a point that I've anecdotally found makes sense, because if you wait a bit more, that slight hunger disappears. Also, it says that at end of a meal, your stomach should be half full of food, quarter of water, and quarter of air. Gives better digestion. Also seems to make sense.

xenonite 6y ago

Indeed, the hacker news title appears to be wrong. But your conclusion and the paper's title is right: "Increasing the number of masticatory cycles is associated with reduced appetite and __altered__ postprandial plasma concentrations of gut hormones, insulin and glucose" One may also add (2012) to the title.

James_Henry 6y ago
I wouldn't say that the parenthetical in the comment you are responding to is correct: > Doesn't this suggest that if you want to eat a lot of food but don't want to absorb too much of it (i.e., are concerned about weight gain), you should chew less? In the study they found that more chewing was correlated with higher satiety and lower food intake in the follow up meal. This may show that if you are concerned about weight gain you should chew more and then you'll naturally eat less.
- xenonite 6y ago
  Yes, I also think that the raised question is really something worthy to explore, especially in the long run.
- tootie 6y ago
  But is it higher satiety because your body is absorbing more nutrients? In that case, it seems to be a wash. Chewing slowly just means you can get by with less volume of food.

hliyan 6y ago

This has always been my intuition: more time for the enzymes in saliva to work, and finer particles and more surface area for stomach acids to attack means faster digestion. Which in turn means a steeper rise in blood sugar.

SiVal 6y ago
But then, it takes longer to chew more. Your reasoning about finer particles has always been my intuition, too, but taking more time to chew while exposing more food surface area to digestive action ought to mean that your blood sugar will rise to the point where you are no longer hungry after fewer bites. You may tend to stop eating after consuming less food, so the total excess insulin (how much overage for how long) may be reduced. Or it may increase, or it may go one way for some foods/people and the opposite for others. Another intuition of mine is that when we finally have realtime monitoring of blood sugar (some future Apple Watch, for example) and exactly what was eaten when, we will discover to our "surprise" that there is so much variation in individual response to consumption of the same quantity of the same food (and even variation for the same person at different times of day and variation for what else was eaten and when) that it will be obvious why nutritional studies based on the usual averaging of crowds never seemed to converge on the right answer. Some averages are meaningless.
- hliyan 6y ago
  > but taking more time to chew while exposing more food surface area to digestive action ought to mean that your blood sugar will rise to the point where you are no longer hungry That's an interesting take! You're probably right.
- collyw 6y ago
  Even slow chewing is going to be quick relative to digestion by stomach acids, no? (Is anyone working on non invasive blood sugar monitoring?)
  - jl2718 6y ago
    I’ve seen several attempts at optical monitors. The first I became aware of was Agamatrix in early 2000s. I doubt this is possible without some kind of catalyst. There’s just nothing all that unique about the composition or phonon modes of sugar or insulin. There are other fluids aside from blood though. I think those have promise. Google X was working on a CGM in a contact lens. Maybe somebody is working on a CGM in dental roots. Gastric sensors may be just as good.

dmos62 6y ago

Anecdotally, I think chewing more brings satiation sooner, so you eat less. When we're really famished, we eat fast with less mastication. It's like you forget to chew. Consciously chewing more might bring you out of that devouring mode. Just speculating.

refurb 6y ago

This seems much more intuitive. The more you chew, the greater the surface area, the more rapidly carbohydrates are released or hydrolyzed by enzymes. If you were to swallow a grape whole, you'd probably pass it whole as well and none of the carbohydrates would be released.

dotancohen 6y ago
Experiment in progress. I'll report back in 24 hours, or however long the grape takes to travel my innards.
- jackric 6y ago
  The world thanks you for contributions to science
- 14 6y ago
  As a parent the thought of you sticking a whole grape into your mouth and swallowing it terrifies me. Don’t tell your mother. This reminds me of a couple things one being the monkeys that eat coffee beans then poop them out to be gathered and used by humans and my dad also tells me a story about a seed people were desperate to try and grow. Everything they tried failed and the seeds would not germinate. Then one day the researchers was in a foreign part of the world and saw a painting that had a Dodo bird under the same tree eating the seeds. Something sparked a thought in the persons head and they decided to take the seeds and feed it to their turkey. Apparently after the turkey at the seeds and pooped them out they would germinate. This also reminds me of how forest trees need fires to release their seeds it seems like nature required an animal to eat these seeds and travel with them before pooping them out into some ready made soil ready to start the plant. Good luck with your grape
- jackric 6y ago
  Well?
  - dotancohen 6y ago
    Still no grape in the stool.

heisenbit 6y ago

Which makes perfectly sense. Stronger signal glucose is coming and quicker uptake of glucose as the pieces are smaller and have bigger surface.

m463 6y ago

That makes lots more sense, especially in the context of highly processed food (which is basically mechanically chewed into dust)

tartoran 6y ago

If you chew less not as much will fit in your stomach and will feel full quicker. Digestion would also be quicker. Not sure about the sugar level though

JaumeGreen 6y ago
On my experience is the other way around. When I eat fast I can eat a lot, when I manage to eat slowly the hunger subsides with less meal consumed.
- toxik 6y ago
  I can eat when I’m full too, I do that a lot actually. It’s entertainment to some extent.
  - toxik 6y ago
    Fascinating, downvoted for an observation on how I and a lot of people see food.

hutzlibu 6y ago

"Doesn't this suggest that if you want to eat a lot of food but don't want to absorb too much of it (i.e., are concerned about weight gain), you should chew less?" Erm, did you never noticed how some food like corn comes out on the toilet pretty much unchanged(and therefore not digested) if you ate in a hurry before? So obviously yes, even without complex chemical analysis your theory seems to be right.

NhanH 6y ago
What comes out is the corn shell, which looks like corn unless you poke at it. Source: I poked at it.
- brodouevencode 6y ago
  For science, of course.
- reddotX 6y ago
  EWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW
- smichel17 6y ago
  Nice! Meant genuinely -- I thought this was very much in the "intellectual curiosity" spirit that this site purports to be interested in.
  - ssully 6y ago
    Move fast and poke shit?
- creaghpatr 6y ago
  This needs it's own separate scientific investigation.
  - Zenst 6y ago
    Agreed - definitely https://www.improbable.com/ig-about/ https://www.improbable.com/ig-about/ science material and possible future winner in the making right there.

aaronscott 6y ago

Thank you for posting this! This physician summarized studies[0] that showed that blended food spiked insulation vs. the same food that was chewed. His information seemed solid, so this title was surprising to see. 0 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMO-5mq3crU&t=16s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMO-5mq3crU&t=16s

sachdevap 6y ago
FYI, typo: you wrote "insulation" instead of "insulin".
- aaronscott 6y ago
  Haha amazing. I guess I was still waking up. It's too late to edit so I must leave the mistake for all to see. Thanks for pointing it out though.

nyghtly 6y ago

Yes; however, if our concern is weight gain, then I believe that this passage is more important: > Compared with fifteen chews, chewing forty times per portion resulted in lower hunger (P= 0·009), preoccupation with food (P= 0·005) and desire to eat (P= 0·002). If you chew more, then you will feel fuller by the time you finish your meal. That feeling could be the difference between over-eating (going back for another helping), and mindful eating (stopping because you are full).

vram22 6y ago
> That feeling could be the difference between over-eating (going back for another helping), and mindful eating (stopping because you are full). IIRC, a yoga book I read said that you should stop eating when you still feel slightly hungry - a point that I've anecdotally found makes sense, because if you wait a bit more, that slight hunger disappears. Also, it says that at end of a meal, your stomach should be half full of food, quarter of water, and quarter of air. Gives better digestion. Also seems to make sense.