Eating with chopsticks ‘helps lose weight’
Reported January 14, 2009
Eating with chopsticks can help you lose weight, according to a new diet book. The Daily Telegraph’s food writer Xanthe Clay takes a look at the theory.
Losing weight has long been never been such a hot topic. According to Dr David Haslam of the National Obesity Forum, around 10 million of us are clinically obese, 24 per cent of the population. If we continue to pile on the pounds at the same rate, by 2012 a third of the population will qualify as obese.
The health complications of being overweight, including type 2 diabetes, many cancers and heart disease, are already costing the NHS a billion pounds a year. By 2050 that could be £50billion. No wonder the Government is launching a television campaign to educate us that fat is unhealthy.
Now a new book suggests we look East for inspiration, to the famously slender Japanese, and more specifically their eating implements. In The Chopsticks Diet by Kimiko Barber, she says that part of the reason for their elegant figures is their practice of using chopsticks.
According to Barber, “Eating with chopsticks slows you down, and so you eat less.” Gobbling food makes us overeat because it takes our brain 20 minutes to register what our stomach contains.
So while Barber’s book concerns itself with Japanese recipes, which tend to be naturally lower in fat and served in smaller portions, using chopsticks should work with Western food too.
It’s a tempting theory. Could ditching the knife and fork really make my weight healthier?
Slipping a pair of lacquered chopsticks into my bag (they are the most elegant and portable “cutlery”) I give the chopsticks diet a go.
Starting with a bag of crisps by the computer (strictly in the interests of research, of course) the method’s charm emerges. That is, for all but the most experienced users, it takes concentration. Watching carefully is vital if the plate-to-mouth transfer is to be made successfully. So there’s no idly shoveling in rubbish while surfing the web.
When it comes to proper meals, eating with chopsticks also means taking smaller mouthfuls, which tend to get chewed better, slowing down the meal, and making it easier to digest. It’s not that it’s impossible, with practice, to pick up huge gobbits of food with chopsticks, just that it’s precarious and it just doesn’t feel right..
Then there’s the matter of sauce. Delicious though they are, most sauces are the enemy of the waistline, loaded with butter and oil. Chicken in creamy béchamel isn’t on many diet plans, but at least if tackled with chopsticks much of the evil artery-clogger will stay on the plate.
Dining on a plateful of risotto with chopsticks feels like trying to relocate the Sahara with a pair of tweezers. The waiters at my local Italian think I’m mad, and my companion is tucking into pudding by the time I give up out of sheer boredom. Nonetheless I’ve negotiated the minefield of a meal out without noshing a week’s worth of calories, which is a result.
So, a chopsticks regime will make you slow down, think about your food more, and maybe even lose weight. None of which can be a bad thing. I shan’t be binning the knife and fork just yet.
