Eating meals slowly could reduce risk of diabetes?

The blogger’s note: There is an email circulated about the speed of eating i.e. ‘eating meals slowly could reduce the risk of diabetes'.  It is claimed by scientists that people who thoughtfully chew their food and don't rush mealtimes not only avoid indigestion - they could be preventing diabetes as well. On the other hand, eating quickly encourages weight gain which in turn can trigger diabetes.

The blogger's Great Sifu, retired nutrionist and medical researcher, Dr JB Lim’s comment is sought and he duly replies as follows:

Sunday, 13 May, 2012 8:06 PM

I am unsure why eating too fast can lead to weight gain. I don’t think this is true. To me this is totally rubbish. To me it is the total energy (calories) you consume daily that exceeds your energy output (physical activities, slower metabolic rate, aging, small body surface areas to dissipate body heat - weight-height ratios, cold environmental temperatures, lack of exercise, hormonal and genetic make-up, etc), that are the true causes of obesity.

Eating fast or slow does not make a difference. It is the total amount of energy (calories) you put in daily over a period of time against all the factors I listed above, that makes the difference in weight gain or loss.

But as to the other claim that eating slowly may reduce your risk of diabetes, or to put it another way, eating fast may lead to diabetes, there may be some partial (I mention ‘partial’) truth, depending on what you eat.

If you eat easily absorb-able nutrients like glucose, or even sucrose which can easily be broken down, assimilated and absorbed very fast into the body, this will force the insulin to be released equally quickly to rapidly control the simple sugar (glucose) floating in the blood.

This poses a challenge to the beta cells of the islets of Langerhans in the pancreas that secrete and control the release of insulin into the blood stream. Once, twice, this is okay. This is not much of a challenge to the feedback and compensatory mechanisms in the body.

The pancreas can easily titrate, adjust, compensate and adapt to the rising blood sugars as this is only a short-term challenge. But if you chronically challenge the insulin secretion with large inflow of glucose (which is the principal nutrient that gets absorbed against the lesser ratios of amino acids (proteins) and triglycerides (fats), various vitamins, minerals and trace elements, the entire endocrinology of insulin mechanism atrophies.

The pancreas can no longer cope with this chronic demand. The insulin-challenge goes into exhaustion. In short it breaks down (stress exhaustion) leading to diabetes mellitus Type II (maturity-onset diabetes).

But if food (especially complex types) with high molecular structures and molecular weights of over 30, 000 such as complex starches and very complex carbohydrates are consumed in small amounts, well spaced feeds, and eaten slowly, it allows time for the digestive juices (pancreatic amylase) to act on the carbohydrates and complex sugars. In short, the insulin release is slow and well adjusted. There is no sudden insulin challenge here.

Such slower (feed-back) mechanisms will not demand an overload on the beta cells. They should then perform beautifully, lasting a long time. The risk of diabetes onset is much less for slow eaters who take his / her time to enjoy their food in small amounts just to meet physiological needs and nutritional balance, provided they do not overeat against some of the factors listed above.

Besides insulin, if their niacin (nicotinic acid – a B group vitamin) and trace amounts of chromium (both as coenzymes to insulin, called glucose tolerance factor or GTF) intake are adequate, this should lower the risk of maturity-onset type II diabetes mellitus (don’t confuse this with diabetes insipidus (very briefly: kidneys unable to control or conserve water excretion).

But the first claim that eating fast causes obesity is something very questionable to me as there is no physiological, biochemical, nutritional physical, chemical or any scientific rationale behind this.

It is the total amount of energy (calories) intake over a period of time that counts, not how fast you consume those same total calories, and then full stop.

Remember your simple school physics – neither matter nor energy can be created nor destroyed, short of using nuclear reactions inside your (human) body, to create matter (obesity).

Even this is unattainable from the energy of foods as theoretically, from Einstein famous E = mc2 equation, you need 9 x 1013 Joules or 90 trillion (90 million million) Joules just to get out one miserable gram of any matter (fat, sugar, protein… anything) into your body as ‘weight gain’.

One small bowl of plain boiled rice (159 gm) contains only 207 kilocalories = 866.7 kilojoules or 0.8667 megajoules. This means you need to eat more than 1 X 10 11 (100,000,000,000) plates of rice to gain just one gm of body weight (if you decide to use nuclear energy ‘to create (eat) as fast as possible’ to gain ‘obesity’). Is this the type of logic the authors of that study is trying to tell us?

Just one more thing before I close my remarks. You can never, never find this explanation or answer from Google, no matter how much, how many times, and how long you ‘google’, let alone get millions of explanation and answer from Google or Wikipedia, in just 0.0000000000000000000000000012 of one second. (*)

Only a professionally qualified research nutritionist, or a diet-related specialist clinician or physician can provide you with this explanation. It took me for example nearly 1 minute to think over your question and another 25 minutes to type out what I independently think without 'Google'.

Don’t feed on rubbish claims from Google that you can pull your own teeth, medically treat your own illness, defend your own self in court, build your own house, construct a massive bridge, or knock down a huge engineering structure from Google in just 0.0000000000000000000000000013 of one second.

I hope it answers your question.

juboo lim

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Further to the above mail, Dr Lim adds on as follows:

The lesser you eat, the longer you live: Nutritionist

Monday, 14 May, 2012 1:18 AM

You can be a fast eater (but not fast food eater) but you should not be a big eater. That’s the difference. But why are you in such a hurry to swallow your food, and land with acid-reflux symptoms and dyspepsia? Are you so hungry as that?

Remember it is the big eater and the fast food eater (not fast eater) that kills. I remember even in the mid 1960’s, my Professors at the University of London, and later at the University of Cambridge told us as students that as early as 1934, Clive McCay and his colleague Mary Crowell at the prestigious Cornell University showed that when rats were fed a severely restricted caloric diet, but maintaining adequate micronutrients, their life spans were twice as long as normally observed in groups where they were fed ad libitum (without restriction at their own liking).

This same effect was shown again and again on other animals and even in humans by other researchers in subsequent years.

In short, the lesser you eat, the longer your life span. So why not? The lesser you eat, the lighter you feel, the lesser you eat, the more comfortable you are, the easier you sit, bend, and breathe, the prettier, slimmer, and more attractive you look.

I also forgot to tell you that when you indulge in a heavy meal, the flood of sugar causes a rapid rise in blood sugar levels that may not level off even after 2 hours postprandial (after eating a meal) as is expected in a normal GTT (glucose tolerance test) curve. There is a delayed in the return to the basal level of 60 and 120 mg/dL of blood sugar. This itself is one of the indicators of insulin resistance and pre-diabetic condition.

The insulin just cannot cope with a flood of sugars from too much and too fast eating. There may also be a delay in the intestinal transit time which normally should empty almost completely in the small intestines within 3 – 6 hours.

Juboo lim

Note: (*) To understand why the Great Sifu makes such a 'funny' remark, refer to a sarcastic comment by a nonsensical guy in the previous post http://taionn.blogspot.com/2012/05/be-mindful-of-dr-jb-lims-professional.html .