What You Never Knew About ‘Biting Down’

“No one bites down on their food. They’re actually biting up.”

It was the most pretentious foodie fun fact I’d ever heard. It’s always fun recalling where you were the moment some ridiculous piece of information seemingly shatters your entire thought process and makes you question everything you believe in. I remember when I learned how to eat a cupcake properly, my mind was a wreck.

“Since your top jaw never moves, and your lower jaw is hinging up, the idea of biting down on something makes no sense. You’re actually biting up,” one of our staff writers, Dominique Zamora, told me one morning last week.

For the rest of the day, everyone in our office sat there trying to prove her wrong by showing her the control we thought we had of our upper jaw. Within a few moments of biting air, we realized that the person who coined the term “biting down” must have been standing upside down when he penned his flawed depiction of the human jaw.

The jaw is only chewing on food when it is moving upwards. 

My reality is ruined. My entire pre-25 year old life was built on the false premise that my upper row of teeth was moving down to crush all the food enemies I put in its path.

Learn something new every day…bite up on that!