Abstract
A group of women' s college students and a group of high school students of bothsexes were made to masticate chewing gums to determine their masticatory force from the eluting sugar content. Mastication methodologically consisted for free mastication, i.e. masticating freely 70 times and forced mastication, i.e. masticating forcedly once or twice a sec.(women' s college students only). Besides, these students were classified by degree of obesity from BMI and Roller' s index (high school students) to examine the correlation between masticatiory force andobesity. As a result, for free mastication of both women' s college students andhigh school students, the obese group showed weaker masticatory force than the non-obese group, indicating a correlation between masticatory force and obesity, compared with non-correlation for any one of forced mastication. This finding isthought to be ascribable to such a condition of forced mastication as makes boththe obese and non-obese groups free from the difference in masticatory force as a result of their elevated consciousness of masticating due to their obligatory mastication at a constant masticating rhythm. In terms of the difference in masticatory force between free mastication and once a sec.-forced mastication, the latter mastication involved better masticatory force for both the above groups ofwomen' s college students and high school students, while for twice a sec.-forced mastication, the former mastication involved better masticatory force for boththe above groups. The difference between free and forced mastication is represented by masticatory rhythm: once a sec.-and twice asec.-forced mastication involved slower and faster masticatory rhythm, than freemastication, respectively. Thus, the present study suggested slow mastication to cause an increase in masticatory forced, as expressed in eluted sugar content.
