Gut Health mini series: Part One
It’s easy to place your whole focus on what you’re eating and assume that if your gut still isn’t right, it must be something in your diet that you’ve missed, and while this may be the case, its possible that your eating habits are causing issues also!
In this mini series, I delve into several tips for gut health that are related to how and when you eat your food. Even if your diet isn’t 100% dialled in, these tips can help to alleviate gut symptoms.
The first gut health tip in this mini series is: Slow down and chew your food.
I am extremely guilty of shovelling food into my face so quickly at meal times, it’s amazing I even tasted it on the way down. It’s as though I’m suddenly possessed and lose all control over my hands and mouth; they’re working independently with the single goal of eating the meal in front of me in record speed. One of the issues with eating so quickly is that we don’t give our body chance to register that we’ve eaten, so we are much more likely to overeat. However, one of the less thought about consequences of eating quickly, is that we most definitely aren’t taking the time to chew our food effectively which has a detrimental impact on our digestive system.
Your gut begins at your mouth and flows all the way through your body to your bum, digestion begins as soon as you place the food into your mouth. You have specific enzymes in your saliva that help break down molecules within your food; the longer the food is in your mouth, the more time these enzymes have to work their magic!
Chewing (or mastication if you want to get fancy) is an integral part of the digestive process, it breaks down food into smaller pieces whilst mixing your food with saliva and those aforementioned magic enzymes. If food is adequately broken down in the mouth, the gut can get to work faster to absorb the nutrients more effectively from your meal without needing to spend more time breaking down large pieces of un-chewed food. Furthermore, inadequate chewing could contribute to gut issues such as constipation, bloating, gas and bacterial overgrowth if the gut isn’t able to properly break down large chunks of food.
So, how much should you chew? There’s plenty of numbers thrown around but your food ideally wants to resemble a paste before you swallow; if you’re eating mashed potato you won’t need to chew nearly as many times as if you’re eating a steak, however, you still want to make sure you’re mixing that mash with saliva so that your amylase enzyme can get to work on breaking down the starches that are present in potato!
Life can be busy sometimes and you can easily forget to chew your food mindfully when you need to get back to that work thing, or you just want to get on with your to-do list for the day, so setting reminders can be a really useful tool. I place a sign on my table that screams “EAT SLOWLY” at me each time I sit to eat. It reminds me to be present with my meal and to take the time necessary to properly chew and digest my food, you might want to place a post-it note on your fridge or inside your lunch box or set a reminder on your phone. It’s also helpful to not let yourself get to the point of feeling RAVENOUS right before your meal, because you are far more likely to start shovelling your food in without thought.
If you’re a serial speed-eater like me, chewing your food properly is going to feel ALIEN, and you’re likely going to want to forget the whole thing and go back to your normal way of eating, but I encourage you to ask yourself, what’s the rush? Can you allow yourself to spend twenty, uninterrupted minutes of your day with this wonderful meal, chewing slowly and mindfully, knowing you’re doing wonders for your gut?!