They say it can take up to 20 minutes for the stomach to feel full. (One article I read said 5–20.). This has always driven me crazy. If this were true we could guzzle 50 gallons of water and not feel full as long as we do so in under 20 minutes. Or eat 20 pizzas.
Fine, I understand there is an ELEMENT of this for long-term recognition that were full. What about why we feel fall short term, immediately after eating a large plate of food.
Also, we can get energy from food (e.g. juice/sugar) well within 20 minutes, so this is another way we can feel full, because we have a lot of energy/calories in our system and then recognize we don’t need more calories.
Help me understand the crazy absolution implied when people quote this statistic.
Thanks gang!!!
The feeling of fullness you get in less than 20 minutes if you were to drink 50 gallons of water is mechanical; You’re stretching your organs and feeling discomfort as a way for your body to tell you that maybe drinking 50 gallons of water or eating 20 pizzas within a few minutes may be a bad idea.
The feeling of fullness or hunger going away after 20 minutes is likely from biochemical mechanisms related to blood glucose or hormones. The chain of cause and effect is longer and more subtle because it didn’t need to be fast or blunt when we evolved our bodies.
They are using the phrase “feeling full” instead of “being satiated” because some people don’t have that great of a vocabulary.
You can feel satiated without remotely having a full stomach. (And vice versa for a few people.)
Is food that turns into energy quickly (e.g. fruit-juice) exempt from this 20-min clause? In other words when food is digested into energy, is that when we feel full? Like the body saying “Okay I have plenty of energy I don’t need more”, or at the least, the process of feeling satiated is complete by the time food turns to energy (?)
The 20 minute thing is possibly incorrect due to previously limited knowledge about how information can travel from the stomach to the brain.
It has been recently discovered that neurons lining the stomach wall can communicate with the brain rapidly (<10ms).