The importance of chewing well

We all know how to chew our food well and that this simple act helps digestion. The litre or more of saliva that our mouths produce every day also aids digestion. But chewing our food well and allowing it to be coated with our mouths’ saliva can lead to digestive magic.

The following words are just a reminder of all that chewing, saliva, and chewing combined with saliva can do.

Chewing

Chewing your food, even without the aid of saliva, can help your body begin to digest your food.

Here are a few examples:

Chewing well grinds food into small bits, allowing it to be more easily swallowed. Ever try swallowing a poorly chewed food? It actually hurts on the way down the esophagus. You can feel the food tear and scrape your throat.
Well-chewed bits of food are more easily coated with digestive juices once in the stomach. The body uses less of its energy to digest well-chewed food than hastily chewed and swallowed food.
Chewing well also allows the molecules of nutrients from the chewed food to be more quickly released and assimilated.
Keeping a food in the mouth longer and chewing it well allows the food’s flavours to be recognized by the tongue. When the tongue recognizes the flavour it sends a message to the brain, which in turn sends messages to the digestive system resulting in the release of the correct digestive juices needed for that food.

Saliva

Saliva can do a few things on its own as well:

It moistens the molecules of dry foods so that we can taste the foods when we eat them.
We aren’t able to distinguish many flavours in dry food.
It binds masticated food bits into a bolus, which we can swallow easily.
It lubricates the esophagus. In fact, the bolus of masticated food never touches or potentially
damages the walls of the esophagus.
It is important to oral hygiene. The mouth is almost constantly flushed with saliva, which flushes
away food debris and protects your teeth from decay. Saliva can actually kill some bacteria.

But where does all this saliva come from?

You have 3 pairs of major salivary glands and a few minor pairs located throughout you mouth. The salivary glands create saliva, which is then secreted into your mouth via the salivary ducts. Sounds pretty obvious, doesn’t it? Well here are a few of the less obvious facts about the three main salivary glands:

The first pair of salivary glands to be considered here are the Parotid Glands. These glands, located just under the ears, produce a serous solution. The read more