"speed" news and stories

For years, doctors, nutritionists and even parents have told people that the key to getting more satisfaction from your food is to eat more slowly. Not only does this allow you to actually enjoy the flavors in your meal, but it was always said to give the brain time to recognize the fact that it was no longer hungry, which would in turn cause you to stop eating. Up until recently, there was no clinical evidence to support that decision.

Dr. Kathleen Melanson, of the University of Rhode Island in Kingston, changed all that by conducting a study on college age women to see how much different styles of eating affected their calorie intake. All the women were given a bowl of pasta with tomato and vegetable sauce after eating a 400-calorie breakfast and fasting for four hours. One group of women was given a large spoon and told to eat as quickly as possible, not pausing between bites. The other group was given a small spoon and told to pause in between each bite, setting down the spoon and chewing 15-20 times. The fast eaters ate 646 calories in 9 minutes, while the slower eaters ate only 579 calories in 29 minutes. The slower eaters also reported feeling fuller, longer.

Melanson estimates that eating slowly could reduce the number of calories a person eats by about 210 per day.

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There are two types of competitions in the world of competitive eating, whether you are talking about pros or about the contests you'll find at the local county fair. One type, perhaps the most popular type, emphasizes quantity and challenges participants to eat as much as they can in a set time limit. IFCOE contests from grilled cheese to ice cream to hot dogs run this way. Other contests challenge eaters to eat a certain amount as fast as possible.

With concerns about the amount of calories that the contest participants take in (and the possibility that they somehow encourage overeating and obesity), some contests are making the decision to switch to this second format, such as the committee behind the World Pie Eating Championship. Even though there have been concerns about choking in speed eating contests before, the WPEC will only have competitors eat one "regulation" meat pie in as short a time as possible. Also in the interest of health, they will be offering a meat-free pie option so as to encourage healthy eating while not discriminating against vegetarians who wish to participate.

Meatless option aside, it actually seems healthier to eat a lot of food than to simply stuff down food as fast as possible, although they planners' theory is that that goes on in the quantity-oriented contests, as well.

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Some of you are no doubt familiar with the technique of cooking food on your car's engine while you drive. Perhaps you've even read Manifold Destiny. A great site called Instructables has a step-by-step guide with plenty of annotated photos showing how to make things like marinated chicken breasts, roasted potatoes, ramen noodles and apples with brown sugar. Mileage ranges and speeds are suggested, as is placement on different parts of the engine. The tutorial was posted by a mechanical engineering student who goes by Trebuchet03. He also adds that the striker plate inside your car door can double as a bottle opener in a pinch.

With drive-thru service now accounting for up to 70% of fast food sales, the mind boggles to hear that companies are trying to speed up their drive thru service. One method of speeding up service is to route calls to call centers - instead of simply receiving them inside the restaurant over a speaker or radio - to increase accuracy. Companies have found this to be relatively effective, particularly in areas where their employees have limited English skills. The call centers enter the menu items onto a central computer, which transmits the order directly into the restaurant's computers. Another strategy is to replace the traditional written menu board with a photo illustrated or digital one, hoping that tempting food imagery will help customers choose their food faster. There are even computer programs that average how much food needs to be cooking at any given moment.

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