To Cut Calories, Eat Slowly

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/23/health/23real.html

by robg • 16 years ago

34 48 16 years ago

nytimes.com

dustingetz2• 16 years ago

"subjects ... consumed roughly 10 percent fewer calories when they ate at a slow pace"

this intuitively feels like a negligible optimization. don't eat your ice cream slower; stop eating the ice cream!

Semiapies3• 16 years ago

A 10% decrease in calories in the average diet is equivalent to dropping a serving of ice cream or a candy bar.

dustingetz2• 16 years ago

the average american needs to drop fully half, or more, of their calorie intake to lose weight (make cal_intake < cal_burned). http://www.diet-blog.com/archives/2006/12/27/do_americans_ea...

byrneseyeview2• 16 years ago

But that's with a 500% increase in time spent eating. It seems much more efficient to wolf down food after working out, assuming all we're talking about is net calories.

ryandvm• 16 years ago

I also fail to see the logic in the proposition of asking someone that already has a demonstrated self-control problem to "just eat slower instead".

nitrogen• 16 years ago

Eating slower is a lot easier than not eating at all, so it can provide a starting point. After constantly being told to exercise, eat less, eat healthier, buy organic, etc., some people have reached the point where there willpower is so low, they can't choose a starting point from that huge list. They need something small that will give them a little nudge in the right direction, to start a positive feedback cycle.

gte910h2• 16 years ago

Negligible? 10% of daily consumption?

So a person consumes 2200 calories a day. He burns 1850 per day. Losing 220 off the top of daily consumption means you have only 130 calories to cut out to not gain week or a lot less to cut to lose weight.

It's a free snack a day the person loses by eating slower. That's a HUGE difference when you look at the very small amount that they may be in excess of their burn rate (or increases the amount of the deficit they're managing to engender).

rue3• 16 years ago

The problem is that people consume 3300, 4400 or 5500 kcal, not 2200 :)

machrider2• 16 years ago

10% fewer calories could mean reducing your intake by 250 calories a day. A pound of fat is about 3500 calories, so that's a difference of 1lb of fat every 2 weeks. If you were maintaining your weight at the previous level, you'd lose 1lb every 2 weeks at the 10% reduced level. When it comes to dietary health, it's all about small changes and long time horizons.

nickpp5• 16 years ago

No. Eat greens.

Eating low calorie-density foods gets calories inside so much slower, no matter how fast you chew. Plus, they are packed with healthy nutrients.

johnrob• 16 years ago

Eating slowly and eating greens are not mutually exclusive.

nickpp5• 16 years ago

Correct. But the second is hugely better.

It's like someone is eating poison and you'd say: eat slower. Not a bad idea, but...

msluyter• 16 years ago

I would add, remove wheat and most other grains -- but especitally wheat -- from your diet. Personal results include a loss of 25 pounds, effortlessly. No hunger, more energy.

Here's some background on the theory behind that:

http://heartscanblog.blogspot.com/2009/10/name-that-food.htm...

cschep• 16 years ago

I've been doing the paleo diet for a while and I can echo the energy level increase is great!

http://thepaleodiet.com/

martythemaniak• 16 years ago

"Don't eat until you're full, eat until you're not longer hungry."

markbnine• 16 years ago

when a group of subjects were given an identical serving of ice cream on different occasions, they released more hormones that made them feel full when they ate it in 30 minutes instead of 5

A half hour to eat one serving of ice cream? Madness...

ulf• 16 years ago

someone should measure the difference between:

a. eating the icecream during 30minutes b. eating in 5 minutes + working out lightly (take a walk) the other 25

Semiapies3• 16 years ago

One first-order approximation is 100 calories per mile for 180-pound person.

Say you walk 2 miles; you've hit about 200 calories. So a wash, and you had to wolf down your food.

liquidben• 16 years ago

I am by no means against working out, but forcing this dichotomy may dissuade people from taking a simple an useful step that could even be aggregated: Stretch out your previously brief ice cream consumption while doing your normal schedule AND go for that walk. BAM! You're an even bigger winner.

amalcon• 16 years ago

How many calories could you burn by jogging (or cycling, or swimming, or doing whatever exercise you prefer) for the extra 25 minutes, instead of eating the ice cream more slowly? If it's even close, jogging is a better idea, because exercise has so many added benefits.

Presumably, ice cream is one of the things that most favors the extended consumption time, because of its high calorie density. For more standard meals, exercise looks even better.

rue3• 16 years ago

A super-rough number to use is 500kcal/hour.

anonjon• 16 years ago

Ice cream is even better because it melts... if you are eating it over a period of 30 minutes, you've only had half of it because most of it melted and dripped onto the ground/your hand! If you eat ice cream really fast and then jog, you will probably get a cramp. But you might puke instead, which would make ice cream come out ahead again. ---

But seriously, this is a bad comparison. Eating the same amount of ice cream over 5 minutes or 30 minutes will have the same amount of calories.

The difference is that eating more slowly causes you to feel full at a lower amount of food eaten, which will keep you (typically) from consuming as many calories.

It is just as useful to eat a set amount (in five minutes) that is 10% less than what you would have eaten.

I think the technical term for this phenomena is the 'inverse Japanese hot-dog guy effect'.

vishaldpatel• 16 years ago

Has anyone here read Surfing and Health by Dorian Paskowitz? Great book that. Everyone seems to eventually arrive to his conclusions (including that TED talk about living past 100).

btilly2• 16 years ago

Of course the food industry is well aware of this. Given that their goal is to sell product, process foods are designed to have texture that rapidly breaks down into easily swallowed mush.

Here is an experiment. Get a some chicken and cook it yourself. (If you need an easy recipe, try http://www.recipefiles.org/view_recipe.php?id=551 - my kids love it.) Buy some pre-cooked chicken from a fast food restaurant like KFC. Attempt to eat pieces of both chickens. You generally will need to chew the chicken you prepare yourself about twice as much before swallowing. The reason is that the preparation for the fast food chicken involves breaking down all of the internal texture of the chicken while injecting a mix of sugar, fat, salt and water to plump it up and make it more tasty.

If you want to look at this another way, stop looking at processed food as food. Look at it as a drug delivery system. The drug is a combination of sugar, fat and salt, and easy administration of the drug is an explicit design goal.

modoc• 16 years ago

You may be overcooking your chicken:) I roasted a nice organic chicken last night and the meat was amazingly soft and almost melted in your mouth.

btilly2• 16 years ago

The chicken that I cook myself is plenty soft. But it is nothing like pre-processed chicken. In particular if you pay attention while chewing you realize that the pre-processed chicken doesn't have a lot of internal texture than the home cooked chicken does. Read The End of Overeating for more details.

chasingsparks• 16 years ago

Or do intermittent-starvation/alternative day fasting.

I do this (48/24) because of the reduced likelihood of a recurrence of cancer. (The cancer I had seems to be accelerated by IGF.)

nickpp5• 16 years ago

There is NO way that is healthy. No way.

starkfist3• 16 years ago

It's interesting you say that because the doctor who wrote ETL, which you mention in another post, prescribes intermittent fasting all the time. He's even written a book about it: http://www.amazon.com/Fasting-Eating-Health-Medical-Conqueri...

khill• 16 years ago

Eat what you want in moderation and exercise. The formula isn't difficult - the execution just requires willpower and discipline.

To Cut Calories, Eat Slowly

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