Small bites help you cut calories

Eating smaller sized bites and savouring them in your mouth a little longer may help cut food intake.

Previous studies have shown that eating smaller bites may slow down eating, but doesn't necessarily have an effect on overall food intake. And keeping food in your mouth longer gives your senses more time to become satisfied and when the senses are satisfied, people tend to eat less.

To determine the effect of bite size and oral processing time of food on satiation, researchers from Netherlands got 8 men and 14 women, who were 21 years old on average, healthy, and liked chocolate custard, to consume regulated amounts of custard via a silicon tube.

Each participant went through 7 scenarios - self-chosen bite size combined with self-chosen, 3 seconds, or 9 seconds of keeping food in the mouth; and small bite size (about 5 grams of custard) or large bite size (about 15 grams of custard) both with 3 or 9 seconds of keeping food in the mouth.

It was found that smaller bite size led to less food intake. Also, holding food in the mouth for a longer time also led to lower food intake. On average, custard intake was 42 grams less for those who held the food in their mouths nine seconds, versus shorter periods of time.

The above findings could be attributed to the g-fact that exposing your senses to food for longer, by keeping it in your mouth for more time, leads to earlier feelings of fullness, and thus to smaller meal sizes.