Slowing down your eating not only gives you a chance to actually taste your food, it may give your body time to signal, Enough! Greek researchers report that gobbling food appears to short-circuit the release of appetite-regulating hormones, promoting overeating. They conducted a crossover study with 17 healthy men, comparing hormones in blood samples taken after eating 675 calories worth of ice cream in 5 minutes versus a more leisurely 30-minute consumption. After savoring the ice cream for 30 minutes, participants had higher levels of two peptides that signal satiety, though there was no difference in ghrelin, a hormone that triggers hunger. Researchers concluded, The warning we were given as children that wolfing down your food will make you fat may, in fact, have a physiological explanation.
TO LEARN MORE: Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism, online before print, jcem. endojournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/ jc.2009-1018v1