Slow Food
If you eat slowly, you will eat less — and you will enjoy the meal more.
Dr. Kathleen Melanson had 30 young women eat a meal of ditalini with tomato and vegetable sauce, topped with Parmesan cheese, under two different conditions. Before each meal, the women had eaten a standard 400-calorie breakfast, and then fasted for four hours.
At one visit to the lab, study participants were given a large spoon and told not to pause between bites and to eat as quickly as possible. At the other, participants ate with a small spoon, which they put down after each bite, and were told to take small bites and chew each bite 15 to 20 times.
When eating quickly, the women took in an average of 646 calories in nine minutes. But when they slowed down, they consumed 579 calories in 29 minutes.
The women felt fuller and more satisfied immediately after they ate the meal and an hour later when they had consumed it slowly.
Someone who ate three leisurely meals might consume 210 fewer calories a day than someone who wolfed those meals down.
“Eating slowly really does make people eat less” by Anne Harding