Eat Slow, Eat Less, Feel Fuller

For most people, this really shouldn’t be something too radical, but latest research coming out of Athens, Greece states that if you eat slower then hunger-inhibiting hormones have a more pronounced effect. Or, in a nutshell, re-read the title of this article.

The researchers already know of a correlation between obesity and the rate at which people eat, but they wanted to assess the impact on the hormones of the gut, specifically the orexigenic (appetite stimulating) hormone Ghrelin and the anorexigenic (appetite inhibiting) Peptide YY (PYY) and Glucagon-like Peptide-1 (GLP-1). Using seventeen adult males, they ingested 675 calories of ice cream on two occasions – one in five minutes and the other over 30 minutes. Before I continue, I’d just like to say that this is the kind of medical experiment I’d be happy to participate in and be paid for doing. Now back to the study, over the course of three and a half hours after the meal, the researchers saw no change in Ghrelin levels, but they did find that levels of PYY and GLP-1 were much more pronounced in the 30-minute test.

Therefore, the participants felt fuller and were less likely to continue eating. Although for a lot of people, it doesn’t matter how full they feel when eating ice cream, they are going to finish the tub come hell or high water. But this kind of study can apply to any and every meal and this sort of trick can become extremely helpful when trying to drop the chub. This is not the first time this sort of thing has been recommended either. As far back as Edwardian times there was a diet suggestion called the “Chew Chew diet”. A British TV show broadcast in 2008 tried this diet out (along with two others) resulting in one woman losing 28lbs in twenty-four days. The link below takes you to a news article discussing the program and the women’s weight loss for anyone interested. The diet itself involved chewing every single bite a minimum of 32 times before swallowing as the Edwardians believed then that if they ate slower they’d eat less. And according to this latest study they were right.

http://www.sundaymercury.net/news/tm_headline=edwardian-diet-helps-woman-lose-almost-two-stone&method=full&objectid=20635628&siteid=50002-name_page.html

Source: Kokkinos A, le Roux CW, Alexiadou K, Tentolouris N, Vincent RP, Kyriaki D, Perrea D, Ghatei MA, Bloom SR, Katsilambros N. Eating slowly increases the postprandial response of the anorexigenic gut hormones, peptide YY and glucagon-like peptide-1. J Clin Endocrinol Metab. 2010 Jan;95(1):333-7.