Research

Mixed

Prolonged oral processing (chewing) increases in vitro protein and lipid digestion efficiency by mechanically breaking down the food matrix, but this does not necessarily translate to altered in vivo glycaemic responses in healthy individuals.

For healthy individuals, chewing your food more thoroughly will help your stomach enzymes break down proteins and fats more efficiently in the lab setting, but it won't significantly change your blood sugar levels or metabolic health. If you have pre-diabetes, thorough chewing may help regulate blood sugar, but for the general healthy population, the food's physical structure (e.g., whole nuts vs. ground) matters more for nutrient absorption than chewing time alone.

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Results show that prolonged chewing time consistently enhances in vitro nutrients digestion by breaking food into smaller fragments. However, this effect does not significantly influence in vivo glycaemic responses in healthy subjects.
Yao Chen · 2023

Why this rating

Based on a PhD thesis with multiple experimental chapters (in vitro and in vivo studies) and peer-reviewed publications.

Source

From ingestion to digestion : The influence of oral processing behaviour on nutrients digestion

Yao Chen · 2023

DOI 10.18174/635855

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DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10

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