How do you chew and swallow food (in detail)

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Long time mouth breather, first time poster to ELI5.

I’m in my late 30s, and I realise l’ve been chewing and swallowing food wrong my whole life, and am bugging the heck out of my loved ones with questions… but I still need answers, so please take a moment to help me out.

When you chew food, do you use both sides of your mouth equally?

Do you swallow an entire mouthful’s worth of food in one go? Or does it slide down your throat bit by bit as you are chewing?

Where does your tongue go while you’re chewing?

Do you chew up and down or kind of grindy side to side?

I know I sound like an alien or an Al but I’m just an undiagnosed tongue tie kid with a weirdly high palate whose tongue has been hanging about the bottom of my mouth like a slug for the last few decades.

In: Biology

14 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

I kind of go back and forth, side-wise. I don’t like feeling like I can’t breathe thru my mouth if I absolutely have to. Can’t do that with food on both sides.

I usually try to temper the size of the swallow, if what I have in my mouth doesn’t seem like too much, I’ll swallow all of it. Sometimes half first, then the rest.

My tongue pushes the food back towards my teeth while I chew. I’m pretty sure that is something that takes time to get down.. if it wasn’t learned young.

Again, a mix of both.. up and down + grinding motions.

I hope that helps

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