Hydrochloric acid, or HCl, is produced in your stomach and secreted to help break down food, giving it more surface area to improve digestion and assimilation of essential nutrients.
HCl breaks down hard-to-digest protein rich foods, like meat. Meat is a very tough protein to break down in the stomach, so tough that only a super-strong acid — like HCl — can do the job.
The stomach starts secreting HCl as soon as you start chewing and tasting your food. This is why gum chewing does not promote health; it prepares the body for food it never gets. This causes the unnecessary release of acid and other enzymes in the stomach, resulting in excess acid.
The opposite problem occurs when your stomach secretes not enough acid — one result of not chewing your food enough.
When your stomach has either too much acid or not enough, a couple of conditions commonly occur. Excess acid leads to gastric duodenal ulcers, and acid deficiency leads to food allergy and sensitivity — which lead to all kinds of symptoms and diseases. Some of the diagnostic symptoms of low acid secretion are:
burping, fullness for an extended period of time after eating, bloating, easily upset stomach
Some of the diagnostic symptoms of high acid secretion are:
stomach pains, stomach pains just before and/or after meals, antacid dependency, stomach pain when emotionally upset, sudden acute indigestion, relief of pain by drinking carbonated drinks or milk.

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