How long does it take to have a meal?

Eating too fast will prevent food from being chewed fully. Food with coarse particles and high temperature can easily damage the fragile esophageal mucosa epithelium, rupture it and cause acute inflammation. A daughter in Wuhan "wolfed down" her meal for a long time, and the average meal time was only about 5 minutes. As a result, her esophagus lost its normal peristalsis function and could not promote food swallowing. Zhang Chuan, director of the Department of Gastroenterology, Beijing Chaoyang Hospital, told reporters that eating too fast will make food unable to be chewed fully. Food with coarse particles and high temperature can easily damage the fragile esophageal mucosa epithelium, rupture it and cause acute inflammation. If inflammation forms a scar on the esophageal epithelium, it will obviously affect its normal motor function, so it is not surprising that swallowing is difficult. If you think that dysphagia and esophagitis are just "small problems", then eating fast and food temperature is easy to induce esophageal cancer is a big problem. Linzhou, Henan Province is a high incidence area of esophageal cancer, which is related to the fast eating speed and overheated food of Linzhou people. Of course, chewing slowly is not as slow as possible, because digestive enzymes that digest food have a secretion peak. Generally, within ten minutes, the concentration of digestive enzymes at the peak of secretion reaches the optimal digestion point of food, which is conducive to the decomposition and absorption of nutrients. If you eat greasy food and are stimulated by fat, bile will be discharged from the gallbladder to the intestine at once to concentrate on digesting fat. But if the meal time is too long, bile will enter the intestine in batches. If the amount of bile is not enough, it may not be able to fully digest fat, which is easy to accumulate fat and lead to obesity. Therefore, eating too fast or too slow may lead to obesity. Director Zhang suggested that it is best to chew slowly for about 20 to 30 minutes for each meal, which refers to the actual time of chewing and swallowing, excluding the time of pushing a cup for a change and chatting while eating.