60 min. eating time / day= mindful eating

If you spend less than 60 minutes a day eating – you are eating too fast. It takes at least 20 minutes for your gut to tell your brain that you’ve eaten. Paying attention to what you are eating, chewing and savouring each bite, eating without distractions, such as driving, phone calls or texting, goes a long way to reduce overeating. Vegetables, fruits and complex carbohydrates all take more time to eat than prefabricated processed foods.

From near the bottom of this linked page, http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/...185295/?page=3

When I step back, I figured I'm eating too fast or just as bad, eating while doing something else. ie. reading online.

I had to go through a mindful eating exercise in my grad school program. Thankfully, it was during lunch in a class where I had bought some Japanese food with lots of noodles!
I don't eat that fast, but I realized quickly that paying attention in that kind of way does really slow you down. I don't do other stuff at dinner, but I am usually reading or on the computer at breakfast and lunch.

My uncle have a weak immune system. So when we used to visit him and when we sat down for breakfast, lunch and dinner, we took time to eat. This was back in Japan and we sat around kotasu. Each meal took more than 20 minutes. Take a bite, chew a lot... , talk a bit like what I was planning to do for the day, or what I did for the day... An age (time) when things moved much slower. And the Kotasu where I sat was heated by mametan. see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kotatsu. He ate slowly and took his time because he said it was better for his health.

We seem to eat to live, where as in other culture, they live to eat. It's viewed as a pleasurable time of get together with family to talk, laugh and enjoy ones family. My parents were very strict about this.

When I visited my parents on my winter break from college, one day, my mother lamented that I ate like a dog!! wolfed down the food in nano second. She was very dismayed by my newly acquired bad habit. A bad habit that has been hard to break. I still do it occasionally.