Ok, so today I was reading the newspaper on my way into work and I noticed an article on dieting. I have always believed that fad diets get you nowhere and this article really just confirmed what I already thought. However there was an interesting line in the article that said one such fad diet was mastication. Now I know what you are thinking and first, get your mind out of the gutter, go on, pick it up, ok, now a mastication diet is a chewing diet (in case you, like me, didn't know the definition of the word) and I thought, chewing as a form of dieting, what the!?! So I did a little further research into the topic.
As it turns out in the late 1800's and early 1900's there was a man called Horace Fletcher, also known as "The Great Masticator," who preached to the world that you should chew your food 32 times per bite or until the food became liquid. It was said the prolonged chewing prevented overeating and led to better systemic and dental health.
The extreme chewing diet was known as Fletcherising but was never proven to produce any of the advertised benefits. I for one don't see Fletcherising as a new thing and am not surprised that it didn't produce any of the benefits stated. I mean cows have been practicing this mastication diet for years by chewing their food for hours on end and they are one of the fattest animals I know! What more proof do you need that this diet is a failure and it was proven long before Horace Fletcher. However, you do have to hand it to the man, it is considered a great insult to imply someone is overweight by calling them a cow and old Horace convinced hundreds of people to adopt more behaviours of a cow in order to lose weight? He must have been a marketing genius!
If you would like to read more about Fletcherising then here are some websites that I again found in a ten minute Google search - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9693596, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horace_Fletcher and http://www.ehow.com/info_8096711_chewing-mastication-diets.html
Still learning each day!
As it turns out in the late 1800's and early 1900's there was a man called Horace Fletcher, also known as "The Great Masticator," who preached to the world that you should chew your food 32 times per bite or until the food became liquid. It was said the prolonged chewing prevented overeating and led to better systemic and dental health.
The extreme chewing diet was known as Fletcherising but was never proven to produce any of the advertised benefits. I for one don't see Fletcherising as a new thing and am not surprised that it didn't produce any of the benefits stated. I mean cows have been practicing this mastication diet for years by chewing their food for hours on end and they are one of the fattest animals I know! What more proof do you need that this diet is a failure and it was proven long before Horace Fletcher. However, you do have to hand it to the man, it is considered a great insult to imply someone is overweight by calling them a cow and old Horace convinced hundreds of people to adopt more behaviours of a cow in order to lose weight? He must have been a marketing genius!
If you would like to read more about Fletcherising then here are some websites that I again found in a ten minute Google search - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9693596, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horace_Fletcher and http://www.ehow.com/info_8096711_chewing-mastication-diets.html
Still learning each day!
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