Just a week or so ago I wrote about how there are lot of different factors that influence how much you eat during the course of a meal. In this post, I shared with you research on eating with other people and how who you eat with and the number of people that you eat with has been shown to influence how many calories you’ll consume at a meal (bad news for men with more than one wife who like to eat as a family – read the post and you’ll see what I mean).
Research along these same lines was just presented at Annual Meeting of the Society for the Study of Ingestive Behavior by Dr. Jeff Brunstrom of the University of Bristol UK and colleagues. In the study by Dr. Brunstrom, they showed study participants either a small amount of fruit or a larger amount of fruit and told the participates that is what they would be getting in their smoothie (in actuality they were both give the same amount).
They study participants they rated how satisfied they thought they would be after the smoothie and then again rated their satiety 3 hours after drinking the smoothie. The people who were shown the smaller amounts of fruit were significantly less satisfied despite acutally consuming the same amount of food.
If you are a regular reader of my blog this should come as no surprise to you, but just more evidence to support the fact that if you want to be more satisfied while eating less calories you need to bulk up your diet with more fruits and vegetables. Fruits and vegetables give you the visual appeal of eating a lot of food without the high calorie backlash.
Could Our Minds Be Tricked Into Satisfying Our Stomachs? [Science Daily]
This study does NOT provide more evidence that fruit is filling (I think we all know that already). It only concerned the PERCEPTION of satiety, based on being tricked into thinking that more food was consumed than was actually the case. Obviously, this is not a tactic that cannot work for a dieter who prepares his or her own food, since the true portion sizes being used will be known.
Oops, there’s an extra “not” in the above post. The last sentence should read “Obviously, this is a tactic that cannot work for a dieter who prepares his or her own food, since the true portion sizes being used will be known.
You are missing the point, the study is highlighting the fact that the dieter who prepares their own food needs to put in plenty of fruits and veggies to appeal to the visual nature of the meal being filling. Anything a person can do to not trigger "I'm still hungry" button is essential. The bottom line is eating so that "you won't be hungry"…not eating "until you are full" as most do. We do not have to stock up on 2000 calorie meals anymore as food has been plentiful since 1950ish.
No, the “point” of the study was specifically to mislead some test subjects about how much fruit they would consume in a smoothie, and then track how satisfied they felt after actually consuming LESS than that amount. This is a “power of suggestion” psychological trick that has nothing to do with someone knowing precisely how much of a food is being served and then choosing to eat it all or not. The whole design of the study was to have some subjects AVOID the direct consumption of what was visually shown to them, yet believe that they did eat it all.
From the Science Daily article: “Participants who were shown the large portion of fruit reported significantly greater fullness, even though all participants consumed the same smaller quantity of fruit.” This is not remotely the same thing as simply asking people if they think that a plate loaded with vegetables looks more filling. That is a no-brainer and probably wouldn’t merit a study. As I wrote, “I think we all know that already.”
The relevant issue in applying this study is that psychological sleights of hand will not work if someone is trying to self-administer them. A magician is not going to fool himself with his own trick.
Someone who prepares their own food CAN use this trick, IF they are willing to not eat even a bite until they sit down with the huge veggie-filled plate in front of them. A few seconds of contemplation ("How am I ever going to eat all this salad?!") can also support the 'big serving' illusion. BTDT, LOL
BTW, the presence of large amounts of food in the supply line since the '50s has little to no bearing on how an individual eats. The individual is dealing with genetic programming, psychological history, and social behaviors while eating….and the existence of a stuffed supply line doesn't affect their consumption drives one whit!
You are referring to the practice of “front-loading” a meal with foods that have relatively few calories but plenty of filling water and fiber content. (This certainly can work with people who do not have serious eating disorders, although they have to actually eat the food to achieve the satiety, of course. Many problem eaters simply discard the veggies and go straight for their usual calorically dense options.) But front-loading is not the tactic used in the study, nor does it address the same psychological behavior that was tested.