Researchers discover that the perfect quantity of bites each day for weight loss and health is 100 bites each day, and new products will soon help people chew more. WSJ's Sumathi Reddy and Clemson University psychology professor Eric meizitang soft gel Muth join Lunch time with Sara Murray. Photo: Getty

In the never-ending pursuit of weight loss, a number of researchers are developing tools that count how much or how quickly we eat.

The Bite Monitor, worn around the wrist like a watch, tallies the amount of bites you take. The going assumption is that 100 bites a day is fantastic for women and men to lose weight, according to researchers at South Carolina's Clemson University who developed the unit. The concept will soon be tested in a study funded through the National Institutes of Health. An industrial product could be ready within a year and it is expected to cost about $195.

Mando Group AB, a Stockholm health-care company, is promoting a "talking" plate that measures how fast you consume and assesses your satiety, or fullness. It is likely to perform the marketplace for about $250 this fall.

Already programs are amazing the HAPIfork, which vibrates and flashes a red signal if a person's bites are spaced apart by less than Ten seconds. The fork, launched this past year by Hapilabs Ltd. of Hong Kong, comes online and in some stores for $99.

"If on your table too quickly, you're probably not chewing and enjoying your food very well and you are likely to be more likely" to consume too much, said Michael Jensen, an endocrinologist and obesity expert at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.

Encouraging people to eat slower, take smaller bites and chew each bite more is an important element of weight control and management, experts say. They also believe reducing while eating benefits digestion, lessens problems like acid reflux disease and enables more nutrient absorption.

"There's quite strong evidence pointing to the need for chewing," said Kathleen Melanson, director of the University of Rhode Island's Energy Balance Lab, which researches satiety along with other eating issues. "The nerves that feed into the muscles in the jaw connect with satiety areas in the brain," she said.

Inside a study by Chinese researchers published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition this year, people who chewed their food meizitang reviews 40 times a mouthful==an unusually high number==rather than 15 times ate fewer calories and had 'abnormal' amounts from the hormone ghrelin, which stimulates appetite, and better amounts of a hormone that reduces appetite.