Chewing more may boost the brain, research says
Chewing more may boost the brain and could help fend off Alzheimer's, according to research discussed by the. Mats Trulsson, a professor in the department of dental health at the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden, said Horace Fletcher's doctrine was extreme, “but in some aspects, he was actually right.”
The research links chewing with digestion, stress, anxiety, cognition and possible benefits for mental ageing. It also points to a wider question for dental health: some experts argue better tooth health could help reverse mental ageing because tooth health and Alzheimer's disease and dementia are correlated.
Horace Fletcher and chewing
Fletcher was dubbed “The Great Masticator” after once chewing a shallot 722 times before swallowing it. He believed food should be chewed “until it is completely liquefied” and that it “practically swallows itself.”
He went further, estimating that vigorous chewing could have saved the US economy of the early 20th Century more than half a million dollars a day, equal to $19.5m in today's money. Trulsson said Fletcher's view was excessive, but not entirely wrong.
Trulsson on digestion
Andries van der Bilt, a pioneer in oral physiology and chewing, said, “It's the first phase of digestion.” Chewing increases saliva production and digestive enzymes like amylase, and it triggers the gut and pancreas to secrete juices that help process food further.
Trulsson said, “If you don't chew, the gut is not prepared to handle food.”
Human chewing patterns
The piece places the findings in an evolutionary frame. Adam van Casteren, an evolutionary and ecological biochemist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, said early hominins lived roughly six to seven million years ago and had teeth similar to those of apes today.
As habitats changed, hominins had to contend with “more mechanically challenging foods,” including seeds, nuts and tubers. Van Casteren also described their food sources as “lots of large, fleshy fruit.” Today, humans spend roughly 35 minutes chewing every day, far less than chimpanzees and bonobos at 4.5 hours a day, or gorillas and orangutans at 6.6 hours a day.
For readers, the practical takeaway is simple: the story is not about swallowing less, but about chewing enough for the mouth and gut to do the first part of the work. The research discussed here points to a habit that reaches beyond digestion and into attention, memory and dental care.
