The very first instruction I was given when I went to the famous Mayrlife medical health resort for one of their famous gut health weeks was to chew. I laughed and thought; ‘I’m no barbarian — of course I chew my food.’
I sat at the table and was given a portion of vegetables with a side of cheese and hummus — the sort of food babies with few teeth can easily chomp their way through — and thought it all seemed too elementary. Then I saw the sign on the table: ‘Chew each mouthful 40-60 times,’ it said. Have you ever chewed a vegetable 60 times? It’s quite the enterprise — but now I have, I can tell you that by the end of that, you are basically chewing a mulch of food, unrecognisable from the form in which it entered your mouth.
