How many times to chew your food: there's no magic number

Published October 7, 2026

Where "32 times" came from

The idea of a fixed count is more than a century old. Horace Fletcher, nicknamed "the Great Masticator", built a popular movement in the early 1900s around chewing every mouthful until it turned to liquid, claiming it doubled the nutrients you got from food. His craze peaked around 1912, and for a while even the US Army issued instructions to chew solid food until it was liquefied. The neater figure of 32 chews a bite is usually credited to William Gladstone, the British prime minister, and it has outlived Fletcher by a long way.

Modern gut researchers are less impressed. Speaking to the science writer Mary Roach, they pointed out that the stomach and intestines are good at making up for hasty chewing, and that extra chewing is unlikely to change your overall nutrition by much. Chewing more still changes some things, though, as the studies below show.

What chewing more did in studies

Most of the research compares 15 chews a bite with 40, in small groups of young adults eating in a lab.

• Gut hormones. In a study of 30 young men, chewing each bite 40 times instead of 15 meant less ghrelin, a hormone linked to hunger, and more GLP-1 and CCK, hormones linked to fullness, after the meal.
• Hunger over the next hours. In another study, 21 men ate the same pizza chewing each piece 15 or 40 times. After the 40-chew meal they felt less hungry and less preoccupied with food over the next three hours.
• How quickly food is absorbed. That pizza study also found higher blood sugar and insulin after the 40-chew meal: smaller pieces were absorbed faster. So chewing more isn't simply better on every measure; it changes how your body takes in the meal.
• How much of a food you digest. When 13 adults chewed almonds 10, 25 or 40 times, more of the almonds passed through undigested after 10 chews. After 40 chews, people also felt full for longer than after 25.

These are small studies, and none of them asked people to chew 40 times for weeks in daily life. What they suggest is modest: a few more chews per bite may change how fullness builds, which fits with what we know about how long it takes to feel full.

Why some foods need more chews

The 266-person study measured how many chews people needed before swallowing bread, toast, melba toast, cake, cheese, peanuts and carrot. Hard, dry foods took the most chewing, because they need breaking down and enough saliva to hold together. Butter on bread, toast or cake cut the number of chews noticeably. Differences between people, like bite strength and how much saliva they make, mattered far less than the food itself.

That's the practical lesson. A soft meal of pasta or a sandwich won't take 40 chews a bite, and doesn't need to. If you'd like meals to last longer, adding something with crunch, like raw vegetables, nuts or crusty bread, slows the pace without any counting.

An easier test than counting

1. Count for one meal, once. It shows you your usual number for the foods you eat most. After that, stop counting.
2. Chew until the bite is smooth. No lumps left, and swallowing takes no effort. That's the point where the food is ready, whatever the count.
3. Put your fork down while you chew. It stops the next bite from arriving before this one is done. There are more ideas like this in how to eat slower.
4. Notice the taste as you go. Flavors change as you chew. Paying attention to that keeps you chewing without turning it into a chore.

Counting every bite all meal gets tiring fast, and Fletcher shows where it can lead: Roach describes a fifth of an ounce of onion taking 722 chews under his method. Smooth and easy to swallow is enough.

After bariatric surgery

Here chewing matters more, and programs do give numbers. MedlinePlus advises chewing each bite slowly and completely and not swallowing until the food is smooth, and hospital programs often give a count, such as the 20 chews a bite in one NHS hospital's guide. Follow the number your own team gives you. There's more in how to eat slowly after bariatric surgery.