You eat too fast, you blow up. That is pretty much it.

It takes me about sixty seconds to eat a glazed donut, four minutes to inhale two pieces of toast and drink a cup of coffee, eleven minutes to down a nutritious half of a Subway turkey sandwich and a cup of coffee. Supper takes a bit longer as I can engage in some conversation . Also, I drag my feet so as not to feel guilty about a dining time of less than fifteen minutes when my wife may have taken an hour to prepare the fare.

While some may consider eating to be a most pleasurable experience requiring necessary time to savor every taste and morsel , I am your average guy and suggest that for all the culinary delights you see and read about, eating now has almost nothing to do with pleasure. Eating takes time away from everything else. People most often now . eat for fuel. Eating is now on a par with putting fuel in the car. Drive up, fill the tank, pay, and get back on the road of life.

On the face of it you might say, May Paula Deen have mercy on you for defining eating as no more than a biological necessity. I think the public pulse is more consistent than not with my disposition. Want proof? Ask that icon of American food marking, Ronald McDonald. The food chains latest ad reads: Fill up for less than gallon of gas. Go to any Krogers and check out the frozen meal section. It is massive and markets one thing above all, namely speed. Minute Rice means exactly that. We all eat fast and our society, our life programs, and our food marketing systems encourage more and more speed.

So what? When does eating fast become too fast? Put another way, does eating fast adversely affect health? It should come as no surprise that it does. What is impressive it the magnitude of the impact of my eleven minute lunch on the digestive system and the symptoms it produces. The most common digestive complaints among Americans are these: bloating, belching, heartburn, gas, abdominal cramps, and diarrhea. Thirty million folks visit doctors every year with these issues. Many more just tolerate the discomfort or every one of these common complaints is associated with rapid food intake. For example, in a study from the Medical University of South Carolina, eating a 650 calorie meal in five minutes rather than thirty minutes caused thirty percent more acid reflux in the two hours following the meal.

In the real world, it should come as no surprise that heartburn hits in an hour or two after you pass through Wendys and down a burger, fries, and a shake . Eating rapidly combined with the common condition of stress leads to increased air swallowing during the meal time. This causes air to build up in the digestive system with the consequence bloating, belching, and flatus. Patients will tell the doctor that following meals clothing is too tight or (my favorite) that they look pregnant! Indeed they may. Finally, if you eat fast, you may find that you just as fast will need to find a restroom. Speed and fat stimulate to gut to contract and the consequences are common but not necessarily obvious to many Americans who are too busy to connect bowel habits with dining habits. I have always had to chuckle about the inside joke regarding the term fast food. Eat fast and become ill fast. In truth, the normal gut can take only so much and one time. In America today, we are asking too much of the digestive system by asking it to keep up with the pace of the life, the stress of life, and the subsequent pressure to eat fast. The way out of this medical, social, and culinary quandary is fairly obvious. Find a way to eat less and use a Ronald McDonald watch to give yourself time to eat. You can expect to enjoy the meal, and avoid heartburn, gas, bloating, and digestive distress in general.