许多女性看到自己的伴侣坐下几分钟便把饭菜统统吞下时都感到难以置信。

如今，韩国研究人员发现了其中的原因：原来男性和女性咀嚼的方式不同。

男性每一口吃的更多，而且嚼得更有

力，这意味着他们吃得更快；而女性每一口咀嚼的次数更多，因此也就需要更长的时间才能把东西吃完。

来自韩国世明大学的研究人员从本校的本科生中招募了24名男性和24名女性作为研究对象。

Many a woman has watched in disbelief as their partner inhales their food minutes after sitting down to dinner.

Now Korean researchers have discovered why. Men and women actually chew differently.

Men take larger, more powerful bites — meaning they finish eating more quickly — while women chew each individual mouthful more times — taking longer to finish eating their meal.

The researchers recruited 24 male and 24 female undergraduates from the Semyung University in South Korea, where they are based.

In order to analyze each individual’s chewing pattern, they hooked electrodes up to their jaws and fed them 152g of boiled white rice.

They documented the size of people’s bites, total chewing time per mouthful of food, total number of chews and how long it took the person to eat the entire meal.

There was a large variation between men and women on every parameter, they found.

Men typically take larger bites with more “chewing power,” which means they consume their meal more quickly than women.

Though women were found to have the same chewing pace as men, they chewed each mouthful more times, slowing down the total time it took them to eat their meal.

The study was published in the January issue of the Physiology and Behavior journal.

It flies in the face of an earlier study, by researchers at Nippon Dental University in Tokyo, Japan, which found no difference in how different sexes chewed gum.

On average, we chew 800 to 1,400 times a day. But Nick Read, chief medical adviser for charity The IBS Network, said a change in our diet means we don’t need to chew as often as in the past. He said, “The Victorians thought you needed to chew food 14 times but we generally wait until it feels right and then swallow — it’s intuitive.”

Because our diet has become softer, thanks to all the processed food, we now don’t need to chew for so long.

为了分析每位研究对象的咀嚼方式，研究人员把电极连上受试者的下颌，让他们每人吃下152克米饭。

他们记录了受试者每一口的食量大小、每一口饭咀嚼的时长、咀嚼的次数和吃完整顿饭花的时间。

他们发现每一个参数上男女差异都很

大。 男性通常每一口吃得更多，嚼得也更有力，所以他们吃饭吃得更快。

尽管女性咀嚼速度和男性一样，但是女性每一口饭的咀嚼次数更多，所以她们就吃得慢。这项研究刊登在一月份的《生理学与行为》期刊上。

这项研究公然挑战了之前来自东京的日本牙科大学研究人员得出的结论，后者发现男女嚼口香糖的方式并无不同。

平均来说，我们每个人每天需要咀嚼800到1400次。

但是慈善机构The IBS Network首席医学顾问尼克•里德博士表示，饮食的变化意味着我们不必像从前一样吃东西嚼那么多次了。

他说：“维多利亚时期的人认为一口食物得嚼14次才行，但我们现在只要嚼到自己觉得可以了便将食物吞下，这是一种本

能。”因为加工食品的出现，我们的食物变软了，因此我们吃东西不必再嚼那么长时间了。

    Words to Learn 相关词汇

   【狼吞虎咽】lángtūnhǔyàn inhale eat or drink, esp. rapidly (slang)

    【公开违背】gōngkāi wéibèi fly in the face of act in defiance of (authority, custom, etc.)