One thing to be said in favor of thorough chewing is that it slows an eater down. This is helpful if that particular eater is trying to shed some weight. By the time his brain registers that his stomach is full, the plodding thirty-two-chews-per-bite eater will have packed in far less food than the five-chews-per-bite wolfer. But there's thorough and there's Fletcher. Chewing each bite, say, a hundred times, Faulks said, could have the opposite effect. It would lengthen the meal so radically that the stomach could have time to empty the earliest mouthfuls into the small intestine, while the last mouthfuls are still on the table. Thereby making room for more. Fletcherizers' meals could conceivably be so interminable that by the time they finally cleared their plate and set down their napkin, they'd already be feeling peckish again.