blue_lotus13 | 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