Chewing more may do more than help a meal go down. Research suggests it can boost the brain, sharpen memory and may even help fend off Alzheimer’s, adding a fresh twist to a habit most people do without thinking.
The science lands with a simple, almost unfashionable message: the mouth matters. Horace Fletcher, the American food reformer who became known as “The Great Masticator,” once chewed a shallot 722 times before swallowing it, arguing that food should be chewed until it is completely liquefied and practically swallows itself. That belief once sounded eccentric. Today, parts of it look less far-fetched.
Experts say chewing more can improve digestion, help people eat fewer calories, ease stress and anxiety, and even support cognition by strengthening memory skills and improving attention span. Mats Trulsson, a researcher who has studied the topic, said Fletcher’s doctrine may have gone too far, “but in some aspects, he was actually right.”
The timing matters because the question is no longer just whether chewing is old-fashioned advice. The latest findings are being read against a wider concern about brain ageing, with some experts arguing that better dental health could help reverse mental decline. They point to a correlation between tooth health and Alzheimer’s disease and dementia, even if that does not prove cause and effect. In that sense, chewing is being recast as part of a larger health picture, not a quirky side note.
The biology behind it is straightforward. Chewing breaks food into small particles and moistens it with saliva so it can be swallowed easily. It also increases saliva production and the amount of digestive enzymes such as amylase, while triggering the gut and pancreas to secrete juices that help process food further. Andries van der Bilt, who worked as a researcher at the University Medical Center Utrecht in the Netherlands for over three decades, put it bluntly: “It’s the first phase of digestion.”
There is also an evolutionary argument. The earliest hominins lived roughly six to seven million years ago and had teeth similar to those of apes today. As rainforests gave way to woodlands, open habitats and savannah-like ecologies, hominins evolved bigger molars, jaws, faces and muscles to handle more mechanically challenging foods. Later, tools, food processing, agriculture and fire reduced the need for such lengthy bouts of mastication.
That shift is visible in the numbers. Humans today spend roughly 35 minutes chewing every day. Chimpanzees and bonobos spend about 4.5 hours chewing, while gorillas and orangutans spend around 6.6 hours. Adam van Casteren, who has studied chewing in mammals, said: “We mammals are such complicated chewers because we want to get as much energy out of our food to power our warm-blooded metabolisms.” He also described some primates as eating “lots of large, fleshy fruit” and, in other cases, “more mechanically challenging foods.”
The contrast is striking: modern humans have traded time at the jaw for speed, convenience and softer diets, but the body may still be asking for more work than many people give it. Trulsson said, “If you don’t chew, the gut is not prepared to handle food,” a reminder that the first bite may shape much more than appetite. The clearest conclusion is that chewing is not a trivial habit at all. It sits at the point where eating, digestion and brain health overlap, and the case for slowing down at the table is getting stronger.
