Junk food and busy lifestyles are the main culprits behind obesity epidemic. Food should be eaten slowly but people don’t have time to sit down and have food properly.

A recent Japanese research has shown that this gulping of food leads to obesity. Researchers looked at the relationship between eating speed, feelings of "fullness" and being overweight.

Hiroyasu Iso and colleagues at Osaka University analyzed the data collected from 3,000 Japanese volunteers aged 30 to 69 about their eating habits.

During research, about half of the men and a little more than half of the women said that they ate until full. About 45 percent of the men and 36 percent of the women accepted they ate quickly. Compared with those who did not eat quickly, fast-eating men were 84% more likely to be overweight, and women were just over twice as likely

Researchers concluded that people who eat quickly until full are three times more likely to be overweight, a problem exacerbated by the availability of fast food and the decline of orderly dining habits.

Researchers added that parents should formulate habit of slow eating in the children to save them from obesity. Gulping of food is equally harmful for children as well as adults.