Chinese Food Health gives you the basic approaches on how to nourish and preserve health in the perspective of Traditional Chinese Medicine.

If you are one of many people who have the perception that digestion starts in the stomach, it turns out you are mistaken. In fact, it begins in the mouth—chewing, actually is the first step of the digestive process.

According to Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) Practitioners, this very first step is exceptionally crucial to our health in three ways. They are nutrition, hygiene, and weight.

Nutrition
First thing first. The whole objective of digestion is to get valuable substances from the food we eat by breaking it down into absorbable nutrients and banish the rest (such as insoluble fiber will continue on through the intestines and help expelling other waste products and cleaning the surfaces of the intestines).

Starting in the mouth with chewing, food is physically broken down into smaller and smaller pieces until they are tiny enough being absorbed into the bloodstream. Which means if we don’t chew properly and swallow the food anyway, our digestive system won’t be able to obtain as much of the available nutrients as possible.

Hygiene
When food is chewed thoroughly—into smaller pieces, they provide more surface area for contact with the digestive enzymes and acids in the stomach making more easily digested. Whilst if food is not chewed well and the large pieces of food can’t be broken down, incomplete digestion takes place. Not only is our body unable to get the nutrients extracted from the food, the undigested food instead becomes “food” for germs in the colon causing bacterial overgrowth, not to mention symptoms of indigestion such as flatulence.

Weight
Once we start eating (chewing), a hormones called Choleocystokinin (CCK) will be released in the gut. These appetite hormones actually can let our brain know when we have had enough food—and of course, stop eating. Unfortunately, so often that many of us eat too fast and don’t give the hormones a chance to function. And by the time the hormones arrives its destination, the brain, we already have been way too full. The bottom line is, the longer we chew, the less likely we are to overeat—the culprit of obesity.

So, reminded by TCM Practitioners, “Chew your food and eat slowly. It’s all for the sake of your good health!”

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