Skip to main content

Eating Slow Can Help Slim Down

The slim and shapely figures of the overwhelming majority of natives I saw on the streets and trains of China during my visit to that country last week made me stand out amidst them with my Desi central bulge. And as this “ I-am –the-paunchy-one among-them” feeling is not something I feel while in Delhi, Punjab, or Gujarat, I tossed the question ‘What makes the Chinese remain slim?’
I had earlier put it to their genes. True most people with Mongolian traits (Chink eyed ones) like the Tibetans, Chinese, Koreans, Japanese look slim and short with smooth skins stretched over their bones and muscles. But catch them in USA after five years of devouring burgers and pizzas with bare hands, and notice the difference.
Or is it their diet? Most are rice eaters, but if rice was the secret to their shape, I couldn’t fathom why Bongs (Bengalis, a community to which I belong by genes and taste buds) queuing up for a table in front of “Oh Calcutta” get that paunch?
And if it is not rice, and if it is not WHAT they ate, what else could the Chinks have in common?
When my Chinese hosts took me to a traditional restaurant for dinner in Beijing, had me seated at the head of the table with a lavish spread of gourmet dishes, and then handed a pair of chopsticks, I realised I could not devour all that as quickly as I wished!
Fortunately I was not a total stranger to chopsticks, having had to use them as my survival tool during a long training trip in Japan many years ago. I remember that it had taken me a week to get the grip, grasp and movements tuned, and had started eating my full meal with just them, but at a very slow pace.
Old memories wafted in while I sipped the soup and watched how my hosts dealt with the dishes of boiled corn, pumpkins, egg, fish, chicken and even rice with just two thin sticks in between their fingers, nibbling at the food like restless ants.
What eating with chopsticks do is restrict the size of morsels. One can barely take a few grains of rice each time, unlike the large morsels that we Bongs scoop with bare hands and put in our mouths before gulping it down. And nibbling small amounts with chopsticks slows eating and stretches the meal time.
During eating, the food gets absorbed from the intestines and sends signals to the brain that then tells us to stop. If we eat slowly the signal reaches on time stopping us from consuming too much. When we eat quickly and gulp, we often miss the “Enough, Now stop” signal.
Eating slow can be a very effective way to slim down. And chopsticks ensure that you do just that. I have decided to take to chopsticks to get into shape.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Doctor’s Dress

The familiar white coat worn by physicians as their distinctive dress for over 100 years, has started generating  murmurs  of controversy. It is not uncommon to find the blood pressure to be higher when measured by a white-coat-wearing-doctor in the hospital or clinic than the readings obtained at home by relatives.  This is due to the anxiety that the white coat and the hospital setting evokes in patients, and has been termed “White Coat Hypertension”. Mature clinicians often routinely subtract a few points from these measurements when entering records in case charts or calculating the dose of anti-hypertensive medications to be prescribed. The white coat scares children too.  Kids often express their dislike for this dress by crying and screaming and by denying access to their bellies or chest for examination by paediatricians in this attire. Many pediatricians across the world have folded up their white coats and taken to informal colourful dressing to...

Food Fads in Liver Disorders

In an attempt at trying to do well to those they love, spouses and parents often enforce diets on patients of liver diseases that often turn out to be detrimental. The commonest food fad is pale insipid boiled cabbage being doled out to nauseous patients suffering from hepatitis that makes them puke even more.  The liver, in a way, is a buzzing manufacturing unit that requires lots of energy to keep its multiple functions going. And it derives all this from the food we eat. During disease, such as during an attack of jaundice, when many of the liver cells get killed, the liver attemptsdamage control by trying to regenerate quickly. For its cells to multiply however, it requires a generous supply of energy that comes from carbohydrates, and protein, the building block for its cells and tissues. Boiled green vegetables unfortunately have neither of these. Hence the situation often progresses to that of a starved liver unable to recuperate due to cut-off food suppl...

Teaching and Learning – is there a trick?

One of the big mistakes that we as parents and teachers often make, and that could stifle the mental development of our children, is to treat them as just small adults! In fact, it is this attitude of grown-ups that could be leading our next generation to become stereotyped conformists rather than original thinkers and innovators. And if we intend to drive home health messages and inculcate healthy habits we need to tailor our efforts to their cognitive potential. That children indeed think and discover the world differently was first noticed by a Swiss scientist Jean Piaget in the early 20th century. He studied his own three children grow and was intrigued by how they behaved, played games and learnt at different ages. With further observations and experiments, he propounded the theory of ‘cognitive development’, placed great importance on the education of children and is hailed even today, 30 years after his death, as a pioneer of the constructive theory of knowing.  He...