The physical structure of food determines how long a person chews it, how quickly it leaves the stomach, and how blood sugar levels fluctuate — regardless of the product's calorie content or chemical composition, infohub.kz reports.
Traditional nutritional research assesses the health impact of diet mainly by calorie content and macronutrient balance. However, a scientific review by the medical publication News-Medical shows that the physical structure of dishes can independently alter appetite and the body's metabolic response. Two products with an absolutely identical set of proteins, fats, and carbohydrates are absorbed differently depending on hardness, viscosity, and particle size.
The mechanical properties of food directly set the pace of eating and the time it spends in the oral cavity. Hard and viscous dishes require longer and more thorough chewing. This increases the duration of sensory contact between receptors and food and helps timely send satiety signals to the brain. Liquid and soft forms are consumed much faster, which blunts the natural feeling of fullness and provokes overeating. In addition, the internal matrix of the product controls gastric emptying: for example, a whole apple, puree, and clarified juice cause completely different spikes in glucose and insulin due to the destruction of cell walls.
Experts pay special attention to ultra-processed foods. Industrial processing deliberately destroys the natural framework of raw materials, making food soft and easy to swallow quickly. In controlled experiments, the rate of calorie consumption per minute for such food was almost twice as high compared to whole analogues. Texture modification is already used in the treatment of dysphagia and could form the basis of new methods for preventing obesity and diabetes.