How many times do you chew your food?

B* has asked me to ask this general question, as I have more readers than he does. He is wondering how many times most people chew their food. He just realizes that he chews more than the average person, which contributes to him being a slow eater.

I had never noticed that he was a slow eater, probably because we usually talk while we're eating together.

Personally, I don't think I chew that much, especially if I'm in the middle of a low blood sugar crisis. When I'm having a low blood sugar attack, I try to eat fast so that I can feel better as soon as possible.


Here's his entry on the subject-
A physiological question for you, if you please

Have you ever done something one way all your life, assuming it was what everyone else did, only to find out one day that you were totally different from everyone else?
Like if your family had something called the "one-second rule", where if you dropped food on the table or ground, you had one second to snatch it up and it would be okay to eat. And you did that for years, until someone told you that everyone else used a five-second rule.

Okay, so my question is: how many times do you chew your food (per mouthful)?

Assume normal food, like rice+stirfry, or maybe a sandwich. Do you bite a few times to break apart the food and then go ahead and swallow? Do you chew for thirty seconds to mush up the food? I've always chewed until it was all broken down, to fully bring out the flavour and make it easy to swallow and digest - I counted today and this is about sixty crunches for pasta, thirty for cereal.

Only at dinner last night did I realize that my friends only chew a few times before going on to the next bite. This answers an unsolved mystery of my life, which is why the heck why I eat slower than everyone else. I just can't bring myself to chew faster - it feels gross to swallow a chunky mass of food and feel it distending my throat as it goes down.

So ... what about you? Am I a freak? Or are you?

*B

Brokeback Mountain

On Saturday night, [Bad username or site: @ livejournal.com], [Bad username or site: @ livejournal.com] and I went to see "Brokeback Mountain." I expected to like the movie, but I liked it even more than I thought I would. Sadly, it's only playing at one theatre in Vancouver; the Park. This is both surprising and sort of infuriating. The movie seems to have limited release, and I'm not sure why. Is it the theme? The content? I really don't know.

We weren't sure that we would get in, as the line seemed to go around the block. We ended up lining up in front of some nice chatty gay guys, one of whom said, "My mother saw a preview and said, "They marry women and have babies. Does this mean you can have babies?"

Me- "Well, technically..."
Guy- "I don't even go there with her. Don't want to give her false hopes."

We all managed to get in, as the theatre seats 500. The audience did consist of many gay men, but there were also some lesbian couples, straight women in groups and even a few male/female couples. I thought I saw Peter Paige, but it was just his evil twin.

I am a fan of both Ang Lee and Annie Proulx and I thought the film did them both justice. Ang was able to bring in his large, sweeping vision and wonderful eye (seen in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon), as well as his effective way of creating characters (seen in The Ice Storm and his Chinese films). Annie Proulx's gritty, detailed and tight prose was conveyed as well as it could be on film.

I never knew that I could be homesick for Alberta, but I was. As a former resident of Saskatchewan, I have travelled around Alberta quite a bit and have seen a lot of its countryside. I don't like the politics, but I love the beauty of the landand I didn't realize how much I missed it. The mountain scenes reminded me of good times walking in Kananaskis, and even my time planting there two summers ago. I am not entirely a city person, though I love cities, I am also a lover of natural spaces, and I loved seeing it up on the big screen. After a while, I tried to pretend that they were just in Alberta, speaking with Wyoming accents. My other quibble was how clean and smooth and pale Jake looked in one of the mountain scenes. Trust me, I was a lot dirtier and darker when I lived on a mountain, and I was able to take a hot shower every day.

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I hope this movie does well. I hope lots of people go see it, and talk about it and that the movies wins awards. I hope that more stories like this get told.