How Chewing Gum Influences Weight Reduction

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Our current knowledge about the progress in nutrition allows us to state that there are many nutrients that can contribute to reducing body weight by activating energy expenditure, that is, accelerating metabolism. For instance, green tea, which contains catechins, can be used to speed up metabolism. Can chewing gum also have an impact on accelerating metabolism?

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The Importance of Thoroughly Chewing Meals

We often focus on what's on our plates and overlook how food gets into our bodies. And rightly so! The composition of our diet, or what we eat, has the most important influence on the metabolic processes in our bodies and leads to significant changes in our body's appearance. However, the way we eat also affects our bodies. The most important thing is hunger suppression. Eating a meal quickly can also be linked to a large meal size. This happens because the signals from the digestive tract are not transmitted to the brain fast enough to cause a reaction that suppresses appetite. Slow eating allows our stomach to gradually fill up and we get an appropriate response from the brain regarding satiety. Thanks to slow eating, we have a lower chance of overeating! There is also another important aspect related to chewing food that has been discovered by Dr. Yuka Hamada from Tokyo. In her study, she showed that enjoying the meal, or chewing it longer, allows for burning additional calories! This makes sense when we consider that the movements of the jaw depend on the activity of the appropriate muscles and require energy to grind the food. In addition, certain enzymes already work in the mouth that facilitate digestion. The scientists from Tokyo went one step further and recently showed that chewing gum after a meal allows for additional energy expenditure.

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Academic review

The study demonstrated that four groups were selected to provide an exact representation of the relationship between chewing time and energy expenditure: the fast-eating group, the fast-eating and chewing gum group, the slow-eating group, and the slow-eating and chewing gum group. Each test involved eating meals that contained 621 kilocalories, and chewing gum lasted 15 minutes. Previous studies confirmed that longer meal consumption contributed to burning a greater number of kilocalories, and chewing gum after eating had an additional impact on kilocalorie consumption.

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Practical guidelines

Based on the study, it is apparent that gum chewing, although not optimal for teeth, can aid in fat reduction by stimulating the thermogenesis of chewing. However, it's not worth discarding carrots and switching to a gum diet, because a detailed investigation of the results indicates that a slowly consumed meal and 15 minutes of gum chewing can help burn an additional 0,35 kcal per kilogram of body weight, which for a man weighing 80 kg means less than 30 kcal. While this is not a groundbreaking discovery, researchers suggest that gum chewing can curb appetite, which can aid in avoiding excessive calorie intake. However, this does not imply that we should adopt a gum-chewing diet. Other natural products that accelerate metabolism do not perform significantly better, and a cup of green tea can help burn around 42 kcal. All measures aimed at speeding up metabolism are intended to support our efforts, not replace them.

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