Nutrition – Lets start at the beginning!

Hands up – all those who don’t chew their food thoroughly? I suspect that that will be most of you. “We don’t have time” I hear you say, “We always seem to be in a rush”. Gone is the idea of having an hour for lunch, instead we talk about grabbing a bite to eat! We eat on the move, in our cars, at our desks and even walking along. Eating fast has become such a habit that when we do sit down to eat we continue on auto pilot and still eat fast. If the last time that you took time to chew your food properly was on holiday or worse still your Christmas dinner then you need to read this.

So why do we need to chew our food well?
The food that you eat should taste good and stop you feeling hungry but it is more than that. It is going to provide all the building blocks and nutrients that your body needs to carry on working. Every cell in the body uses the nutrients in food to enable it to do it’s job. When we don’t get the correct nutrients then our energy drops and disease starts to take over. When you chew your food several things happen. Firstly you break the food up. This is the mechanical process of digestion, it increases the surface area of the food allowing important enzymes access to the food. The fruit and vegetables that we eat are plants. Their cells are surrounded by a cellulose wall that needs to be broken by chewing to allow access to the vital nutrients inside. Secondly some digestion starts in the mouth because the enzymes in saliva start to break down the starches in your food. When food is not thoroughly chewed many nutrients stay locked in the cells and pass out of the body unused. Thirdly the action of chewing signals to the other parts of the system to get ready because food is on it’s way.

What happens next
Undigested food in the stomach ferments. This causes acid reflux, burping. Bad bacteria feast on the undigested particles producing gas and even more bad bacteria. We get bloating and wind. When poorly digested food reaches the stomach and the intestines it can sometimes irritate the wall of the gut causing inflammation, this in turn may become damaged. Once this happens we are more likely to develop allergy symptoms. This is made worse by the fact that when food that is not properly broken up enters out blood stream the body does not recognise it, instead it thinks it is an invader.

An advantage of eating slowly and chewing your food well is that you are less likely to over eat. Once you start eating it takes twenty minutes for your brain to register that you are full. If you eat quickly you will have eaten more than you need before the brain registers that it is time to stop.

Signs that you need to slow down
If you get any of the following problems then it is a good idea to start chewing your food properly.

Although these may be symptoms of different problems a good place to start would be your digestion. Next time I will write about the other end of the process. We can tell a lot about our health by what comes out and how often this happens.

Pamela Singh
Nutrition Consultant

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