'If the Calorie Intake is the Same, the Way You Gain Weight is the Same' is a Lie. The Decisive Difference in Insulin and Heat Production Caused by Differences in Chewing (Pace and Particle Size)

In diets and health management, the idea that “the balance between calories in (intake) and calories out (expenditure) is everything” is correct as a law of thermodynamics, but it is insufficient to explain the complex endocrine system of the human body.

What cutting-edge nutritional metabolism is sounding the alarm about is the fact that “even with the exact same 500kcal meal, the processing (biological response) in the body yields completely different results between ‘swallowing it instantly without chewing’ and ‘chewing it 30 times until mushy before swallowing’.”

This article explains how the difference in the physical condition of “chewing vs. not chewing” can turn a meal with the same calories into a “fattening poison” or “burnable energy.”

The Difference in Particle Size (Degree of Crushing) and the Speed of Digestion and Absorption

The primary purpose of chewing food is to destroy the cell walls of the food and optimize the “surface area (particle size)” that digestive enzymes in gastric and intestinal juices come into contact with.

• Experiment with Crushed Nuts (Related to E04): There is a study comparing “swallowing large chunks almost without chewing” and “chewing until it becomes a paste” when eating nuts like almonds. When chewed well, the cell walls are destroyed, allowing the lipids and energy inside to be firmly absorbed, and a strong feeling of fullness lasts for a long time. However, it has been suggested that when swallowed without chewing, the proportion of large chunks excreted in feces increases, while causing stomach discomfort and making it harder for fullness signals to reach the brain.
• Conversely, if you “hurriedly swallow without chewing (fast eating)” carbohydrates (like rice balls or bread), a large amount of carbohydrates avalanches from the stomach to the small intestine at once, and the speed of sugar absorption into the blood jumps explosively (blood sugar spike).

”Excessive Secretion” of Insulin and “Lack” of GLP-1

Even if you consume the same amount of carbohydrates and calories, the amount of insulin secreted from the pancreas changes dramatically depending on the speed of eating (the amount of chewing).

• When blood sugar rises rapidly due to fast eating, the pancreas panics and secretes an unnecessarily “large amount of insulin.” Insulin is also known as the “fattening hormone,” and it works diligently to pack the excess sugar in the blood into fat cells.
• On the other hand, when you take your time and chew well (GLP-1 secretion mechanism related to E02), a hormone called “incretin (GLP-1)” is secreted early from the intestinal tract. GLP-1 is a magic hormone that slows down stomach movement to make sugar absorption gentle, and gives advance notice (a heads-up) to the pancreas: “Sugar will come slowly later, so please release insulin little by little.”

In other words, even with the exact same calories, a fatal difference arises: a “meal eaten without chewing” invites a rampage of insulin (the path of fat accumulation), while a “meal eaten with chewing” deploys the safety net of GLP-1 (the path of metabolic stability).

Ignition Failure of “Diet-Induced Thermogenesis (DIT)”

Furthermore, there is a difference in the calories burned (calories out).

• The amount of “Diet-Induced Thermogenesis (DIT),” where the internal organs generate heat during the process of chewing, swallowing, and digesting food, increases in proportion to the number of chewing times and the duration (E03).
• Even if it is the same solid food, if eaten as if pouring it in, the sympathetic nervous system and the histamine nervous system are not sufficiently stimulated, and DIT is not activated. As a result, the function to “burn off ingested calories as heat” remains turned off, and the ingested 500kcal weighs “heavily” on the body as it is.

For those who don’t lose weight or feel unwell even when their numbers on the “calorie counting app” are perfect, there is a high possibility that they are overlooking the “design of the entrance” before the system: “by what physical process (chewing) did you welcome those calories into your body?”