DID YOU KNOW?

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Besides burning 11 calories (per hour), giving you a fresher breath and exercising your facial muscles, chewing gum, will help you NOT to pick on food before and after your meal.

The action of chewing actually serves as a form of exercise for our jaws. Jaw movement promotes facial exercise which not only helps to relax the body and increase blood circulation, it also tones up facial muscles.

Chewing gum (especially sugar-free) helps to promote weight loss by distracting your mind from real food.

Try chewing whilst preparing a meal, you will be less tempted to pick and nibble. Or after, to avoid post-meal picking.

The habitual practice of chewing gum helps keep their face looking slim, toned and elongated.

Facial exercises can help to :

- Reduce stiffness from face

- Reduce formation of wrinkles

- Increases elasticity of skin

- Keep skin muscles in place

- Maintains skin tissues from premature aging

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A healthy digestion begins in the mouth.

Slow down when you're eating. It takes our body about 20 minutes to realize that it's full.

If you eat quickly, you'll eat extra calories while your body is figuring out whether it's hungry. By the time your body realizes that it's full, you've already eaten more than you needed. If you eat slowly, your brain will start sending signals to stop eating at the right time.

A good rule of thumb is as follows: if you can tell what kind of food you are eating from the texture of the food in your mouth (not the taste), then you haven't chewed it enough.

(For example, if you are chewing broccoli and you run your tongue over the stalk and can tell that it is still a stalk or over the floret and you can still tell that it is still a floret, don't swallow. You need to keep on chewing until you can't tell the stalk from the floret.)

The process of chewing is a vital component of the digestive activities that occur in the mouth, inextricably linked to good digestion, and therefore, good health.