ANYONE who has ever tried to eat a plate of nasi campur at a food court during a 30-minute lunch break knows that slow eating is more of an aspiration than a lifestyle.
Speed is the order of the day, the food is good, the queue is long and nobody has time to sit there chewing each mouthful like a philosopher in deep thought.
But does slowing down at the table actually help you lose weight?
Verdict:
TRUE
Eating more slowly and chewing your food more thoroughly is genuinely associated with eating less, feeling fuller and carrying less body fat, though it is not quite the effortless weight loss hack it is sometimes made out to be.
The science behind it comes down to a timing problem between your stomach and your brain.
When you eat, your gut releases satiety hormones including peptide YY and cholecystokinin that signal to the brain that food is arriving and it is time to start wrapping up the meal.
The catch is that these signals take time to travel, and research suggests the brain does not register fullness until roughly 20 minutes after eating begins, which means anyone who finishes their meal in 10 minutes has eaten well past the point their body would have stopped them if it had the chance.
A systematic review and meta-analysis published in PubMed, which examined 16 experiments on chewing and appetite, found that prolonged chewing significantly reduced self-reported hunger levels and that 10 of the 16 experiments found chewing reduced overall food intake.
The review also found that increasing the number of chews per bite raised levels of satiety-related gut hormones in three of five studies, suggesting the mechanism is real and not merely psychological.
The body of evidence on eating speed is even more striking.
A 2021 systematic review and meta-analysis published in a peer-reviewed health journal, which analysed 21 studies on self-reported eating speed and obesity indicators, found that fast eaters consistently had significantly higher BMI than slow eaters and concluded that slowing down may be an effective strategy for weight management.
A 2023 study published in PLOS One, which followed 8,982 Japanese workers, found that fast eating was independently associated with being overweight, with an odds ratio of 2.92 compared to slow eaters, meaning fast eaters were nearly three times more likely to be overweight even after accounting for other lifestyle factors.
It is not just about what shows up on the scales either.
A 2024 study published in Frontiers in Nutrition, which examined 6,548 Japanese adults with normal BMI, found that fast eating was associated with significantly higher waist circumference obesity, suggesting that eating quickly may contribute to dangerous visceral fat accumulation even in people who do not appear overweight by conventional measures.
A study published this year in Scientific Reports confirmed this finding, reporting that fast eaters were 2.18 times more likely to have high visceral fat compared to moderate eaters after adjusting for lifestyle and physiological variables.
Now for the BUT, because nobody is going to lose 10kg just by counting their chews.
The studies on eating speed are mostly observational, which means they show an association between fast eating and higher body weight, not that slowing down alone causes weight loss.
People who eat slowly may also make better food choices, eat at a table rather than on the go, or have other lifestyle habits that contribute to a healthier weight.
What the evidence does support is that slowing down gives your body's satiety signals time to do their job, which may help you eat less at each meal without feeling deprived.
In a country where eating quickly is practically a competitive sport, that is not nothing.
Put down the phone, take a breath between bites and let your stomach catch up with your ambitions.
It will not fix a bad diet, but it might mean you order one less roti canai.
Sources:
1. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.
2. https://www.mdpi.com/2227-
3. https://journals.plos.org/
4. https://www.frontiersin.org/
5. https://www.nature.com/
