Slow Down! Why Your Fast Eating Habit Might Be Hurting You - AI Podcast
Dr. Joseph Mercola - Take Control of Your Health
Briana Mercola
4.6 • 1.5K Ratings
🗓️ 16 May 2025
⏱️ 8 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Story at-a-glance
- Research shows eating slower increases meal length through more chews and bites, not by changing chewing tempo; this gives your brain more time to register fullness signals
- The study found following a slow rhythm of 40 beats per minute while eating significantly extended meal length by 47 seconds, adding 29 more chews and almost five more bites
- Taking smaller bites, using smaller utensils and choosing whole foods that require more chewing naturally extends your mealtime without requiring conscious effort
- Putting your fork down between bites creates natural pauses that allow fullness hormones to work properly, preventing overeating
- Women showed stronger responses to slow rhythmic eating cues than men, though the benefits of slower eating applied to both sexes
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Dr. Mercola's Cellular Wisdom. |
| 0:04.0 | Stay informed with quick, easy to listen summaries of our latest articles, perfect for when you're on the go. |
| 0:09.0 | No reading required. Subscribe for free at Mercola.com for the latest health insights. |
| 0:14.0 | Hello and welcome to Dr. Mercola's Cellular Wisdom. |
| 0:18.0 | I'm Ethan Foster, and today we're focusing on how the speed |
| 0:22.3 | of your meals can shape everything from appetite control to metabolic health. Research shows |
| 0:27.8 | that simply extending the time you spend chewing and biting can meaningfully reduce overeating, |
| 0:33.0 | so let's unpack what that means. Thanks, Ethan. Most people underestimate just how quickly they finish a plate. |
| 0:39.5 | When you eat in 20 minutes or less, your brain often doesn't receive fullness signals until after |
| 0:44.1 | the meal ends. That delay encourages excess calories, post-meal fatigue, and long-term weight gain. |
| 0:50.6 | Problems the latest study from Fujita Health University set out to solve. The researchers asked 33 healthy adults to eat identical quarter-slice pizzas |
| 0:59.0 | while listening to metronomes set at 40, 80, or 160 beats per minute, |
| 1:05.0 | plus a control with no rhythm. |
| 1:07.0 | They track total meal length, number of chews, and number of bites to pinpoint which behaviors actually draw out a meal. |
| 1:13.6 | Their core discovery was clear. Longer meal times came from more chews and more bites, not from slowing jaw tempo. In fact, chewing rhythm is largely hardwired in the brainstem. What changed instead was how often participants brought food to their mouths |
| 1:29.0 | and how thoroughly they broke it down before swallowing. The 40 BPM pace extended meal |
| 1:34.6 | duration by roughly 47 seconds, about a 30% increase compared to no rhythm. That slower beat added |
| 1:41.9 | 29 extra chews and nearly five additional bites per slice. |
| 1:46.5 | It was simple external pacing, yet it powerfully stretched the eating window without conscious |
| 1:51.2 | effort from participants. Importantly, those extra seconds matter because fullness hormones like |
| 1:56.7 | colicidicinin and peptide Y-Y-Y need time to circulate. If you conclude a meal too soon, |
| 2:02.6 | those hormones can't ramp up before you reach for seconds. Giving them even a minute more can |
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