You are what you eat, as the adage goes. But a growing body of evidence indicates that it’s not just what and how much you eat that influence your health. How fast and when you eat also play a role.
Research now indicates that these two factors may affect the risk for gastrointestinal problems, obesity, and type 2 diabetes (T2D). Because meal timing and speed of consumption are modifiable, they present new opportunities to change patient behavior to help prevent and perhaps address these conditions.
Not So FastMost people are well acquainted with the short-term gastrointestinal effects of eating too quickly, which include indigestion, gas, bloating, and nausea. But regularly eating too fast can cause long-term consequences.
Obtaining a sense of fullness is key to staving off overeating and excess caloric intake. However, it takes approximately 20 minutes for the stomach to alert the brain to feelings of fullness. Eat too quickly and the fullness signaling might not set in until you’ve consumed more calories than intended. Research links this habit to excess body weight.
The practice also can lead to gastrointestinal diseases over the long term because overeating causes food to remain in the stomach longer, thus prolonging the time that the gastric mucosa is exposed to gastric acids.
A study of 10,893 adults in Korea reported that those with the fastest eating speed (
Source : Medscape