Eating Fast May Raise Obesity Risk

My chopsticks are barely out of their paper sleeve and my friends sushi lunch special is nearly gone! This is a lady who complains about her weight. She is a really fast eater. Always the first one done. I used to be this way. I have learned to slow down mostly by simply imitating the slower eaters eating style/s. I have kept off lost weight (17) pounds for about 11 years now with one glitch after a temporary return to emotional overeating. I gained back 10 but have since lost it and kept it off for over 2 years. I have observed that many overweight people do eat quickly. Seems to be one of the “bad habits” of the chronically overweight and obese.

"Eating fast"? Surely you mean eating 'quickly'. Either way, it's generally a bad idea for all kinds of reasons. Sharing a meal with a fast eater is not fun for those of us who enjoy a bit of conversation while dining.

with our lunch breaks at 30 minutes there is no time to thoughtfully eat and chew our food. I want to see a study conducted on people in various occupations, their lunch duration and the percentage of obese workers. should be enlightening.

Only yesterday, the BBC World Service was telling me to eat fruit and other acidic food quickly rather than slowly to avoid tooth decay.

Normally I don't watch other people eat, but this vacation I did. We were in a French Island. My impression of these thin people was that they fought with their food. Arms akimbo with knife in one hand, fork in the other. Each green bean was thoroughly inspected, turned and cut before being eaten. It was exhausting to see the fight going on between the eator and eatee. To make matter worse, none belonged to the clean plate club. Half the food remained on the plates. The native (and plump) waitresses would look at the waste with anger. Totally non scientific, but I would agree, slow eating equals thinner people.

My old friend Fumio once told me a Japanese proverb about how to cure eating fast, like most Americans do. "Thirty chews". Chew your food is what it means. The Japanese even invited a 30-second timer to make sure you have chewed long enough.

This makes a lot of sense. Of course, the faster one eats, the more they're going to eat. That seems intuitive. Having such a large sampling is also very accurate for spotting trends. I'm a slow eater, for sure, and not obese. But I'll get sleepy after eating. In fact, when I eat after work, at home, sometimes I'll start to fall asleep while I'm eating. Not sure what the connection between sleeping after eating and obesity might be, though.

Eating too much, defined by the excess calories we consume relative to the calories we use is the cause of weight gain. There are many things we do as individuals while we eat and which affect the number of calories we consume. If fast eating is associated with weight gain, then an individual fast eater must find ways to reduce the speed with which we eat. The individual must determine which of many things they could do to avoid fast eating. I am a lifelong fast-eater but have only had a problem with overweight since I have passed 40 years of age. I am now 81 and have reversed my overweight condition by changing my diet and food eating habits. With respect to fast eating, I have conquered (crossed fingers) that problem by reading and commenting on newspaper articles published on the internet while keeping all food beyond arm's reach. Doing so, enables my brain to process the necessary information to conclude that I have consumed sufficient calories to sate my need for nutrients. There are many other tactics I use as the need arises and there are many things most people could do to low their eating practices.

This story is a prototype of bad science reporting. Correlation proves nothing about causation. Eating fast might cause obesity. Or obesity might cause eating fast. Or another hidden factor might be at work. All these researchers have is an observed association. Not an experiment. No real evidence to back up your headline. Stop misleading people and soothing your reporter's conscience by burying a disclaimer about causality deep in the story. Your headline is making a claim that this study can't support.

What frustrates me is that my school-aged children are rushed through their meals at school. Fast eating is encouraged and the kids barely have enough time to be outside and active. Very frustrating!

Don’t eat alone.

In The Times 'notice' about the article, (which when clicked on will take you to the actual article), it mentions something about 'skipping breakfast' not being a factor. I've read the article twice now, and it mentions nothing about skipping breakfast. (Did someone 'eat' the info. very fast?)

Maybe our school kids should have a lunch period that is longer than 20 minutes (during which time they stand in line, get their food, sit down, eat and then get back to class). We are training them to eat fast, and also to have no table manners. Just gobble it down and get back to class.

There are two kinds of satiation, let's call them sensory and visceral. Visceral satiety is the sensation of physical fullness that comes near the end of a meal. Sensory satiation, harder to achieve, satisfies the craving for taste, texture, and smell of food. Our need for sensory satiation can impels us to eat more avidly than we need to, before visceral satiation can send the "too much" message to the brain. An illustration of this idea lies in the casual observation that the more expensive the restaurant, the smaller the serving size. Exotic ingredients, presented with artifice, entice the diner to refine his consumption, savoring each expensive bite rather than wolfing the entire entree in a few mouthfuls. On the rare occasions I have eaten as gourmet rather than gourmand, I have always been surprised at how successfully both visceral and sensory satiation could be achieved on one plate.

"...fast eaters may continue eating without waiting to realize they have eaten enough, whereas slow eaters may have time to start to feel full and then stop." Isn't it a factor in obesity that - especially with certain foods and situations - eaters simply don't feel they've eaten "enough" whatever the speed of consumption? Overeating isn't necessarily related to physical hunger.