
To Cut Calories, Eat Slowly - robg
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/23/health/23real.html
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btilly
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
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.

~~~
btilly
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.

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nickpp
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.

~~~
msluyter
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...](http://heartscanblog.blogspot.com/2009/10/name-that-food.html)

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

<http://thepaleodiet.com/>

~~~
aschwa
Agreed. While eating less can help, its more about what you are eating.

Eat real food (meat, fish, vegetables, fruit, nuts, seeds). Stop eating
processed food. Cut out the grains and possibly dairy.

If you do this (exercise is good too), you will lose weight and not have to
worry about how much you are eating.

<http://marksdailyapple.com> is another good resource

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markbnine
_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
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

~~~
liquidben
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.

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amalcon
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.

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

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

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chasingsparks
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.)

~~~
nickpp
There is NO way that is healthy. No way.

~~~
starkfist
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...](http://www.amazon.com/Fasting-Eating-Health-Medical-
Conquering/dp/031218719X)

~~~
nickpp
We'll, it's just my gut opinion.

I will read more on this, I may be very well wrong.

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vishaldpatel
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).

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dustingetz
" _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!

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

~~~
byrneseyeview
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.

~~~
Semiapies
What the efficiency gained? You're still spending the same time, you're just
exerting more effort to choke down your food quickly and go walking.

~~~
byrneseyeview
That's assuming that 1) choking plus walking is less fun than eating a meal
over a long period, and 2) that it takes just as long. I would dispute #2;
you're correct about #1, but there's no reason to expect that you can have
weight loss independent of other factors, some of which you might not like.

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

