About the Benefits of Chewing

ABOUT THE BENEFITS OF CHEWING

You need to chew for a long time. Some say - at least 30 chewing movements for each piece, others - about 80. Of course, it’s not worth counting, but it’s really quite long, especially if you’re not used to it. Each piece is chewed until it becomes absolutely liquid, so that the tongue does not feel the slightest heterogeneity. In this case, the food is abundantly moistened with saliva. If there is no or little saliva, it means that either the person is not yet hungry (or is already full), or the food is of poor quality - too astringent, scalding, tasteless or dry.

Many people take the path of least resistance, drinking plenty of food. In principle, it is allowed to sip a little, but it is advisable to learn to make do with your own saliva. Moreover, liquid food - dairy products, juices and even water must also be chewed, thoroughly sloshing around in the mouth with each sip. This is due not only to the fact that salivary enzymes break down starches and, to some extent, proteins, and mucin, the mucous substance of saliva, makes food digestible.

By the way, almost all plant foods have the property that during the process of chewing they become more and more tasty. People who swallow quickly simply do not know the real taste of food.

Chewing is also extremely important from a physiological point of view. After all, all nutrients are broken down in the gastrointestinal tract only in a dissolved state. In a lump, food is not digested. Small lumps can be softened by gastric juice; pancreatic juice and bile contribute to further dissolution. But at the same time, digestion slows down significantly, the possibility of putrefactive fermentation appears, and food is used extremely irrationally.

The efficiency of our digestive machine increases significantly if food enters the stomach in liquid form, properly processed by saliva. It becomes possible to be content with fewer foods, because a person is nourished not by what he ate, but by what he assimilated.

It is known that the lion's share of our energy expenditure comes from digestion. These costs are significantly reduced with thorough chewing, because the volume of food eaten is usually reduced, and the quality of pre-processing is greatly increased. The digestive organs get the opportunity to work without overstrain and rest, as a result, a wide variety of diseases - gastritis, colitis, ulcers, neurasthenia, etc. go away on their own.

No, it is no coincidence that all nutritionists insist on thorough chewing, often even declaring this principle to be the key one. There is a lot hidden in it. For yogis, it is formulated as follows: Solid food should be drunk, and liquid food should be eaten!