Steven Bartlett with Dr Sarah Berry
You can eat two foods with identical nutritional labels, yet your body may absorb and respond to them differently based on how much their structural matrix has been processed.
The physical structure of food shapes how your body accesses its calories, meaning intact whole foods tend to digest more slowly while pulverized equivalents can produce larger blood sugar rises.
Slowing your eating rate and deliberately increasing your chewing frequency allows delayed fullness hormones from the lower gut to reach your brain, naturally reducing overall caloric intake.
Berry found that snacking after 9 p.m. was associated with more fat around the belly and higher inflammation even with healthy snacks; she points to cellular clocks to explain why eating earlier may matter.