Many people know that eating carefully and swallowing slowly is not only conducive to gastrointestinal digestion, but also a good way to prevent obesity. In fact, the benefits of chewing more are far more than these. In a study, the chewing society of Gifu University in Japan found that the subjects chewed food for only two minutes, and the correct rate of answering questions increased by 30% than usual. This result means that two minutes of chewing behavior improves memory.
Researchers have found that chewing stimulates the part of the brain that is responsible for memory. Cells in the hippocampus of the brain, which is the part in charge of learning, will decline with age, and short-term memory will also decline. Chewing can increase the activity of hippocampal cells and prevent them from aging. Researchers from the University of Northumbria in the UK also confirmed that chewing more can accelerate heart movement, increase brain hormone secretion, and improve thinking ability and memory.
In addition, chewing can also promote people to secrete saliva, and the area of the brain responsible for salivation is closely related to memory and learning. Therefore, chewing more when eating, gargling after eating, and tapping your teeth often can help improve brain vitality. For children, more chewing can promote brain development, middle-aged and young people can improve work efficiency, and the benefits for the elderly are to prevent brain aging and Alzheimer’s.
How many times should I chew each mouthful? According to experts from the chewing society of Gifu University in Japan, a mouthful of food must be chewed at least 20 times before we can get the benefits brought by saliva. If we can reach 30 times, it will be better. However, many people have become accustomed to wolfing down food, and it is difficult to change to chewing slowly all of a sudden. They either forget it unknowingly or swallow it less than 10 times.
For such people, you can try to add more chewy food to your meals, such as corn, oats, peanuts, walnuts, sesame seeds, and various beans when cooking rice and porridge; When frying vegetables or cold dishes, do not abandon the stems or leaves of some chewy vegetables (vegetable food), such as shepherd’s purse, celery, spinach, Chinese cabbage, amaranth, etc. nuts such as chestnuts and melon seeds can also be used in the dishes; Those who like to cook soup may as well put more kelp and lotus root, which are both nutritious and chewy.
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