Are you chewing to applesauce consistency? If you are, good for you! If you are not, why? Chewing to applesauce consistency is important for success before and after surgery. Come to think of it, everyone on planet Earth should be chewing to applesauce consistency.
Chewing to applesauce helps in many ways. Chewing well slows down your eating. Because your brain needs time to recognize fullness, taking more time will help you feel full on less food. Chewing well also gets your food into that applesauce texture. When you lose part of your stomach, you have less ability to get your food into applesauce consistency. Chunks of food in your small intestine will not allow for the complete digestion of that food. This leads to missing out on some of your nutrition. You will have less risk of food getting stuck. Chewing well also helps you feel fuller longer. We’ve also seen patients have less problems with reflux when they started chewing to applesauce.
Are you having trouble remembering to chew? If you use the Baritastic app, it has a timer for chewing. You could also use the timer on your phone. One of our patients even used this timer for the time between bites. Set your timer for 20 seconds. If your food is still chunky, chew for 20 more seconds. Another tip is cutting your food into very small bite. Think about a bite no bigger than the tip of your pinky. Large pieces of food are hard to chew well. Cutting just one bite at a time and putting your fork down between bites will also help. Write the word “CHEW” on a sticky note and put it next to your plate.
Learning to chew to applesauce will cost you some time and frustration to develop the habit of chewing to applesauce. The payoff? You will eat less and get more nutrition out of your food choices.
Information provided by Rene Norman, RD/LD, bariatric dietitian.