Are you Chewing Often Enough?

Are you Chewing Often Enough?

How many times do you chew your food before you swallow every time you take a bite?

I guess we don’t think too much of it. Well this is the question my nerdy TMJ brain has been thinking lately.

I did count when I ate and it is about 100 chewing per minute.

So I did a rough calculation. In a 30 minute meal, chewing occurs say for 20 minutes.

20 minutes x 100 – 110 times per minute = 2000 ~ 2200 times per meal.

3 meals per day, 2000~2200 x 3 = 6000 ~ 6600 times per day just for eating.

When you take a bite of food, it is recommended to at least chew 30 times before swallowing.

Some of the benefits are:

1 better for digestion,

2 makes you full with less food

3 keeps your chewing muscles strong

4 helps facilitate salivation that is important for oral hygiene and oral health/gum health/protection against viruses and infections

So it is a big exercise eating your meals.

If you rush through your meal time, certainly you are not getting enough motion in your TMJ from chewing.

In the next blog I will report back to you how little I chew when I rush through my meal.