A recent study showed that paying attention to the food while eating reduced the likelihood of eating too fast and overeating, leading to obesity. Another study suggested that regular yoga practice could help develop mindful eating.
Researchers in Greece recently studied the effect of rapid eating on the gut hormones that regulate how full people feel after eating. These hormones - peptide YY (PYY) and glucagon-like peptide (GLP-1) - act on the brain after a meal to tell it of satiety, (the sense of being full), so the person stops eating.
Dr Alexander Kokkinos, of Laiko General Hospital in Athens, and his team studied people eating the same meal at differing speeds, and found that the PYY and GLP-1 hormones were reduced in people who ate rapidly, leaving them less satiated and prone to overeating.
A Bowl of Icecream in 30 Minutes
Seventeen healthy males were offered the chance to eat two bowls of ice cream for science – surely one of the easiest tests to volunteer for!
On one occasion they were encouraged to eat the 300 ml ice cream (675 kcal) meal in five minutes. On the other occasion they were to take 30 minutes over the dish.
After each meal, participants filled in diagrams showing how full they felt. Their blood levels for the hormones PYY and GLP-1 were measured at intervals over the next 210 minutes.
Eating Slowly Leads to a Sense of Feeling Full
Both hormones were significantly higher after the 30 minute meal than after the five minute rush to empty the icecream bowl. The participants also noted on their diagrams that they felt fuller immediately after the 30 minute meal than after the five minute one.
“Our findings give some insight into an aspect of modern-day food over-consumption, namely the fact that many people, pressed by demanding working and living conditions, eat faster and in greater amounts than in the past,” said Dr Kokkinos.
“The warning we were given as children that ‘wolfing down your food will make you fat,’ may in fact have a physiological explanation.”
The research was reported in ‘Eating slowly increases the postprandial response of the anorexigenic gut hormone, Peptide YY and Glucagon like peptide-1’, in the January 2010 issue of Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism.
Mindful Eating Leads to Less Risk of Obesity
Another study looked at how regular yoga practice could contribute to mindful eating. The study, led by researchers at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, in Seattle, Washington, concluded that people who eat mindfully are less likely to be obese.
The study was a follow-up on an earlier one which found that middle-age people who practiced yoga gained less weight over a 10-year period than those who did not, regardless of what they ate or what exercise they did.
"We hypothesized that mindfulness – a skill learned either directly or indirectly through yoga – could affect eating behavior,” said Dr Alan Kristal, associate head of the Cancer Prevention Program in the Public Health Sciences Division at the Hutchinson Center.
Mindfulness in Eating Prevents Weight Gain
Mindfulness – the ability to be calm and observant during physical discomfort – “teaches how to maintain calm in other challenging situations, such as not eating more even when the food tastes good and not eating when you’re not hungry,” Dr Kristal said.
More than 300 people who regularly attended yoga centres, gyms, fitness centres and weight loss programs in the Seattle area were asked to fill out a survey on mindful eating, with questions about
- disinhibition – eating even when full;
- awareness – being aware of how food looks, tastes and smells;
- external cues – eating in response to environmental cues, such as advertising;
- emotional response – eating in response to sadness or stress; and
- distraction – focusing on other things while eating;
as well as information about their fitness routines and their BMI (body mass index).
Participants who practiced yoga had lower BMIs than those who did not, and this correlated with their higher scores overall on the mindfulness survey.
“This suggests that mindful eating may play an important role in long-term weight maintenance," Dr Kristal said.
“Mindful eating is a skill that augments the usual approaches to weight loss, such as dieting, counting calories and limiting portion sizes. Adding yoga practice to a standard weight-loss program may make it more effective,” he said.
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Sue Cartledge - I'm a science, health, nutrition and lifestyle journalist, fascinated by the way the physical world operates in all its forms, and how ...
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