Illnesses do not come upon us out of the blue. They are developed from small daily sins against Nature. When enough sins have accumulated, illnesses will suddenly appear.
Hippocrates
Our food should be our medicine and our medicine should be our food.
Hippocrates
All disease starts in the gut.
Hippocrates
Hippocrates is considered the father of medicine. He took the role of the physician from more of a witchdoctor status who deals with evil spirits as the cause of disease to understanding the natural physical causes of disease. One of his primary observations is that disease begins in our lifestyle and dietary choices. He put great emphasis on the importance of good digestion to support good health.
Over the last 45 years I have come to much the same conclusions from my own observations. Most poor health comes down to lifetime habits of poor diet and poor physical conditioning. In previous centuries deficient diets produced compromised immune systems that left folks susceptible to infectious diseases. This is still the case in many third world countries. But in first world countries we have developed a very different problem – the destructive dangers of excess are destroying our health.
Excess is not simply about too much food, but about what has happened to our food in order to produce that excess. We have cleverly invented ways to store and preserve food in order to help produce the abundance we see all around us. Unfortunately this abundance comes at a price we don’t readily see until it is too late. Simply put, in order to make our food indigestible to bugs, molds, bacteria, and inhibit oxidation spoilage, we have made our food supply indigestible to ourselves as well. We are still able to get calories out of the food, but the support of our ability to get the full complement of vital nutrients has been lost. Modern food actually blocks our ability to break down the poisons naturally found in foods and adds a ton of new poisons into the food. This in turn gradually destroys our digestive system and sets us up for the whole host of chronic diseases that so heavily permeate our modern culture.
Lets start with something very simple – chewing. For millions of years humans have been chewing rough fiber filled foods to fill their bellies. The very process of chewing these rough foods stimulates the immune system around the mouth to produce Th17 immune cells to fight off bad bacteria and toxins. Modern foods try to do away with chewing. We want a nice soft “mouth feel” to our foods or a crunchy feel that quickly melts and is easily swallowed. We don’t like foods that require lots of chewing before it can be swallowed. Consequently we are able to swallow a lot of food in a very short period of time so we can fill up fast. This makes it very easy to over eat as the stomach can stretch to hold more food faster than we can digest the food and get it into our bloodstream to tell our brain we have had enough.
Chewing also stimulates the release of the necessary stomach acid for breaking down the foods enough that the enzymes from the pancreas can cut the food up into molecular size pieces for absorption through the gut lining. We fill our stomach faster than we can produce the acid necessary for the second step in digestion – acid breakdown of the food. Chewing food for a long time before swallowing allows and stimulates this acid production at the right rate for proper digestion. Weight gain is a natural consequence of this compromised eating style.
Even our meats have had the chew taken out of them. Animals used to be range fed and had to be moved from pasture to pasture. This produces tough, chewy meat. Modern meat production grain feeds the animals in feedlots that restrict their movement producing soft, tender meat that almost needs no chewing at all. Our fruits and vegetables have been hybridized to similarly be less tough and chewy and more soft and squishy. These changes also hugely change the nutrient profile of our foods to have fewer nutrients but a lot more calories per ounce.
Certain enzymes are produced in our saliva that starts the digestion of starches. If we do not chew our foods a long time, these enzymes do not have the time to do their job properly. As a result we end up feeding bad bacteria in our gut these starches producing gut inflammation. If we ate the high fiber foods, we would have the opposite result, since the fibers feed the good bacteria instead of the bad bacteria.
A last point to mention about chewing is the importance of tasting the food you eat fully. This is for several reasons. Your taste buds send messages to many parts of your body. The tongue nerves and taste buds are actually an extension of your brainstem, which sits right behind the back of the throat. Taste directly affects your brain chemistry and consequently your mood. Feeling satisfied and balanced come in part from tasting all the flavors in your food. Our culture has come to use food as a mood drug by only paying attention to the sweet, spicy, and salty flavors and ignoring the bitter, astringent, and savory. This tends to leave us in a constant state of feeling imbalanced and craving as a result.
How much should you chew a piece of food? Food should be fully liquefied before you swallow. But since so many foods today don’t even need to be chewed, the question might be how long should a bite of food roll around on your pallet to be fully tasted and let the enzymes do their job? For solid foods I would say around 20 to 30 seconds per small bite. Savor your food and let it fill your taste buds with flavor as long as possible. Actually be present with your food and taste it. If you find you stop being present and tasting, then stop eating. Just this one little tip will make a huge difference in your digestion and ultimately your health.