The Ultimate Hack for Chewing Food Properly

Chewing your food properly and eating slowly is universally recommended. However, in spite of trying to be aware of this, I still used to end up eating very fast. Until a colleague of mine, Jyotsana J, gave a key insight into why most of us tend to eat fast. This is one of those posts which might sound too trivial to write a blog entry about but it has been so effective in my case that I felt it is worth sharing with others. So, please don't judge me on this 🙈.

Most of us tend to eat food this way. We take in a morsel of a dish and while chewing it, we tend to get ready the next morsel to be consumed. And often these two activities are done in parallel and coordinated so that as soon as we swallow the morsel of food in our mouth, the next chunk is ready on a spoon (or in your fingers) to be consumed. The downside of this approach is that we subconsciously try to optimize this process by ensuring that the chewing of the food is more or less done by the time we get the next morsel ready. And hence we end up chewing lesser that we should be doing.

Instead, try this hack. When you take in a morsel, don't be in a hurry to get the next morsel ready. Instead, sit back and comfortably chew your food. Only once you are done swallowing the chunk in your mouth, proceed to get ready the next morsel.

Here are some of the things that I have observed with this change:
1. Chew my food better and eat my food more slowly
2. Because I tend to eat more slowly, I am also tending to eat a bit less
3. Relish the food more because when I sit back and focus on chewing the morsel in my mouth, the taste is better observed
4. Talk less over meals (not sure if this is good or bad though :))

So, if you are fast eater like I was, this technique is worth trying out. And if it works, do share your experience in the comments.