There's a term for people who inhale an entire meal in basically one go: "weird lunatics." Also "men," apparently.
Researches at Semyung University in South Korea studied the relationship between chewing/gender and chewing/obesity in the journal Physiology & Behavior. They attached electrodes to the jaw muscles of all participants and had them eat the same item: 152 grams of boiled white rice. They didn't find anything conclusive in the relationship between mastication and obesity (though they're confident they will when they conduct further studies, as that was the whole goal of the study in the first place), but they did find that men, on average, tended to eat much faster than women, both because they chewed faster and because they took bigger bites. Granted, it was a small study (24 men and 24 women), but it's still interesting.
My takeaway from this is that apparently I chew like a woman, or as I like to phrase it, like someone who actually takes the damn time to enjoy their meal. I've seen people (this is admittedly anecdotal, but yes, these were almost entirely dudes) at pricey, high-quality restaurants HORK down an entire plate of food seemingly in one go, and I have to wonder: how the hell can they possibly enjoy that? Why are they at this expensive place if they're not going to take the time to savor their food? Why not just attach a feed bag to your face? It'll be cheaper and probably just as enjoyable for you.
Boys are weird.
Image via Werner Heiber/Shutterstock.