Get hooked to Hara hachi bu for health

Don’t stuff yourself to the brim. Keep some empty spaces inside your stomach. Eat light and healthy, as heavy consumption can pull you down and slacken your pace. We have come across these instructions of basic healthy-eating habits over and over again. But how many times did we care to follow them? Not much to recall I assume.  

But according to well-known medicinal and dietary experts Bradley J. Willcox, D. Craig Willcox and Makoto Suzuki, keeping the ‘stomach full to eight parts of ten’ is more of a norm than a customary tradition when it comes to food. They have recommended this routine in their famously titled best-selling rulebook, The Okinawa Programme: How the World’s Longest-Lived People Achieve Everlasting Health—And How You Can Too.

Hara hachi bu? Yes, you heard it right. It is an age-old practice, culturally associated with the people inhabiting a small group of islands situated to the south of the larger main islands of Japan, called Okinawa. Hara hachi bu is a simple dictum followed by the Okinawans wherein they eat until they fill about 80 per cent of their stomach’s capacity.

The rule suggests that it takes around 20 minutes for the stretch receptors of a human stomach to tell the brain how full the eater is. Also, the gastric juices, enzymes and acids secreted from the foods too take similar time-span to reach the stomach. So, one actually starts to feel satiated only after about 20 minutes from putting down his fork. Therefore logically, if one would eat until 100 per cent full, he would then be fed with an extra 20 per cent over his normal capacity at every meal. The stomach would automatically have to stretch a little more each time to accommodate that excess amount of food. And this can invariably lead to overeating, thus leaving a very little scope to derive the same gratifying satisfaction. This by far forms a continuous vicious cycle.

The Okinawans naturally keep their calorie-count low by opting for less ‘calorie dense’ foods. They purposely go for grub which is high in unrefined carbohydrate and fibre, plus low on fat. You too may walk away with this salutary solution to benefit your everyday health and mood. Just make hara hachi bu your guiding mantra at your daily mealing hours.