Atheer – External Sources
Could eating your food more slowly be healthier for you? According to Forbes.com a new study has suggested that those who eat slowly tend to weigh less.
The researchers looked at data from 60,000 people who had diabetes over a six-year period, with their lifestyle habits, such as how fast they tended to eat, their alcohol use and their sleep patterns all monitored. The participants were also asked whether they tended to sleep within two hours of eat dinner, if they would often snack after dinner and if they typically ate breakfast.
The odds of being obese were linked to all of the eating-related variables. The speed at which one ate had a rather sizeable effect. Those who ate at a normal speed were 29 percent less likely to be obese than those who ate quickly. Meanwhile those who ate slowly had 42 percent lower odds of being obese. Interestingly, those who slowed their eating over the study period tended to lose weight over time, as measured by BMI and waist circumference.
One problem with the study however is that it wasn’t a controlled experiment. Participants weren’t randomly assigned to different groups and asked to eat at different rates. It was an observational study, which merely attempted to capture natural eating habits and changes over time.
With this being said, the results did match other studies, which have shown that people who eat faster also tend to weigh more and gain more weight over time. This seems to be not just a matter of the amount of food consumed, but also the ways in which satiety hormones (those that govern the feeling of fullness and cue us to stop eating) react.
The timing of eating is the other takeaway of the new research. Studies have repeatedly shown that when we eat is nearly as important as what we eat. People who eat late at night versus those who don’t eat for several hours prior to bed, are known to have a greater risk for metabolic syndrome and overweight.
What we eat is certainly important, but how we eat, coupled with our attitude towards food, is equally important.
