2023-12-07 14:06:18
What if the secret to weight loss simply lay in the consistency of your food? Researchers at Wageningen University in the Netherlands started from this suggestion and conducted a study on crunchy foods, arriving at the conclusion that they help you eat less and promote weight loss. The study, whose results were published in the ‘American Journal of Nutrition’, is certainly ‘small’, with only 50 participants observed for a short period of time. Therefore – as the researchers themselves point out – it is necessary to replicate this work for a longer period of time. But research confirms the concept, with results in hand, as I note that chewing time plays an important role on the sense of satiety, and therefore on the quantity of food consumed and the relative caloric intake.
The study was based on the idea of having volunteers consume four types of lunches that were similar in terms of taste, satisfaction and calories (the intake per type of meal was the same), but with different consistencies and degrees of processing. Some of these meals consisted of rice, crunchy salad, a chicken breast, and for dessert a fresh apple and thick, unflavored yogurt. Other meals included fish bites (softer), mashed potatoes and coleslaw. And canned soft mango with flavored yogurt. By observing them, the scientists realized that for the more solid meal of the two, the volunteers took longer to chew, ate less quickly and became full more quickly.
If both meals contained the same amount of calories, the study highlights that 26% fewer calories were consumed in the crunchier meal (about 300 fewer calories). This was for the simple reason that those who consumed it were less hungry, ate more slowly, and therefore ate in smaller quantities. Between the less elaborate meal and the more elaborate meal, the calorie intake was therefore very different: from 483 to 790, simply due to the speed of ingestion.
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