Study results presented during the 2006 North American Association for the Study of Obesity meeting confirm the commonly held belief that eating slowly reduces your intake of food.

30 women were given a large plate of pasta and told to eat as much as they wanted.

  • 646 calories in 9 minutes when told to eat quickly
  • 579 calories in 29 minutes when encouraged to pause between bites and chew each mouthful 15 to 20 times
  • That?s an 11% reduction in caloric intake

Dr. Kathleen Melanson and colleagues from the University of Rhode Island concluded, “Satiety signals clearly need time to develop.” In addition the volunteers said they enjoyed the meal better when they ate slowly.

One potentially confounding variable is that the volunteers drank considerably more water when they ate slowly, which might have contributed to satiety.

I wonder what the results would be if they were given wine?

More research is obviously needed. šŸ˜‰

11/16/06 10:05 JR

Hi, Iā€™m JR

John Russo, Jr., PharmD, is president of The MedCom Resource, Inc. Previously, he was senior vice president of medical communications at www.Vicus.com, a complementary and alternative medicine website.