Dining at a moderate pace helps to achieve a feeling of fullness (satiety).  Conversely, eating quickly blunts the hormones that signal satiety, and Greek researchers submit this may prompt overeating.  Researchers from Lake General Hospital (Greece) studied 17 healthy adult male subjects, to whom the researchers gave a test meal consisting of 300 ml ice cream (675 kcal), consumed in random order on two different sessions by each subject where each meal took either 5 minutes or 30 minutes.  The team found that the subjects who ate in 30 minutes had higher levels of two peptides that signal satiety – namely peptide YY (PYY) and glucagon-like peptide (GLP-1), as compared to the participants who ate their meal in 5 minutes.  The study authors conclude that: “Eating at a physiologically moderate pace leads to a more pronounced [satiety] gut peptide response than eating very fast.”

When the response of hormones that signal fullness are blunted, we may succumb to overeating.  Avoid this by dining at a less-harried pace.