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Study: Blended food prevented hunger for longer
- SiVal 10y agoMy own experience is that I can get the same satiety for the same duration with somewhat less food by taking smaller bites and spending more time chewing. This takes longer, of course, so my assumption was that the mechanism was simply that I would have eaten less by the time my blood sugar rose and turned off my hunger. But I suppose it's also possible that I'm making the solids and liquids harder to gravitationally separate--essentially blending a smoothie with my teeth. If so, just taking your time and enjoying the flavor of the food could be a more convenient and appetizing alternative to a chicken-broccoli smoothie.
- foooeee 10y agoTotally this. That's the problem I have with this trend for liquid food: you're eating food without chewing, and chewing is an essential part of the eating process as it gets saliva flowing, it exercises your jaw and sends signals to your digestive system to prepare. And besides, texture is as much a part of food as taste and how it looks.
- giardini 10y agoAny starches (complex sugars) in food are usually first broken down by saliva in the mouth while chewing. The enzyme amylase in saliva breaks starches into simpler sugars. Drinking food likely reduces the amylase content of the bolus (dose of food entering stomach) and should consequently slow the digestion of starches and sugars in that food. The pancreas secretes another form of amylase, so starches would eventually be digested anyway, just not as quickly. So your stomach would hold food longer and your pancreas would have to work a bit more. Not a bad thing: I often eat only because "my stomach feels empty". Perhaps this would reduce that feeling. "Amylase": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amylase https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amylase "Role of Amylase": http://healthyeating.sfgate.com/role-amylase-8526.html http://healthyeating.sfgate.com/role-amylase-8526.html
- singold 10y agoI remember reading somewhere that the signal from the stomach to the brain telling you are full takes 20 minutes so if you eat slower you eat less food in that period when you are full but don't know it yet
- Bartweiss 10y agoAnd interestingly, drinking is the opposite - consuming liquid kills thirst immediately, and it won't come back for ~20 minutes even if you still need hydration. Both systems make sense, since you can hydrate in ~60 seconds but might need to stay hungry for ~10 minutes after you start eating. But they can both cause problems: hunger by prompting fast eaters to overeat, and thirst by letting dehydrating things like liquor satiate you.
- afro88 10y agoThis is exactly what I thought. The solution isn't to buy a blender, but to chew your food properly.
- wastedhours 10y agoAlong with the delayed reaction to feeling full, am sure I read somewhere that chewing longer triggers the brain into thinking you've eaten more as well.
- magic_beans 10y agoI'm very guilty of not chewing very thoroughly, and it causes me all kinds of digestive ails... But when I chew more than three times my JAW starts to get sore. How can I fix this!
- adrianN 10y agoIn unrelated news: chewing also increases satiety. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26188140 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26188140
- AznHisoka 10y agoWhy does the article assume its healthier simply because it prevents hunger longer? Granted, people might eat less overall but that doesnt guarantee its healthier.
- singold 10y agoI think that's because two of the most important problems with food are quality and quantity that people eat. I'm general terms we eata lot of bad food, so if you have the same meal (so same quality) eating less (or only what your body needs and no more) that should be healthier. I think I get your point though and eating well is a lot more that eating good food in adequate portions, and I agree, but for the general population over eating and junk food are the worst problems right now imho.
- marcosdumay 10y agoIs there even any evidence that eating less this way leads to smaller nutrient absorption by the body? This article does not seem to have any.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- pascalxus 10y agoRelatively speaking, eating healthy is much easier than eating less. Anybody with enough will can eat healthy -it's quite sustainable. However, Over long periods of time, Eating fewer calories is a much larger challenge, that's why satiety research is of such enormous importance. For overweight people, There are many biological forces that force people to eat more than they need.
- savrajsingh 10y agoCheck out daily-harvest.com and use coupon code "savraj" -- if you want to work here lmk!:)
- beloch 10y ago"Does blending fruits and vegetables ruin some of the fibrous benefit?" “Blending won’t have a significant negative impact on fiber,” Spiller reassured me. “Fiber is what’s responsible for the viscosity of a smoothie and its impact on the bacteria of the large bowel. Mashing fiber up into small pieces should only enhance its availability for the bacteria." People have told me, here at Hacker News, that blending fruit into a smoothie separates the sugars out and makes it like drinking coca-cola. It's nice to see that ridiculous notion quashed.
- jimrandomh 10y agoFiber has two effects: it slows the rate of digestion, and it provides energy for gut bacteria that can metabolize it. The objection to blending is that it loses the first benefit, but this quote talks only about the second.
- Isamu 10y ago>blending fruit into a smoothie separates the sugars out One would have to perform an experiment to find out. Did the HN commenters point to any? Likewise,does this guy have experimental evidence? Try it both ways and measure your insulin response at 5 minute intervals.
- magic_beans 10y agoJuicing your fruit, which is when you extract the juice and throw away the fibrous bits, DOES make it basically coca-cola. But blending your fruit, which is just mashing the juice and the fibrous bits together, is essentially the same as eating a whole fruit.
- mrfusion 10y agoThis question comes up a lot. I really don't think there's ever been a study to confirm that the fiber stays intact after blending. Everyone is kind of citing everyone else but no one has ever tested it.
- SippinLean 10y agoDon't the nutritional benefits from fiber happen on a microscopic level? Genuinely asking--my blender is too dull to split molecules.
- awqrre 10y agoYou don't have to work as hard to break it down?
- toodlebunions 10y agoAnyone who has had a smoothie has experienced this before.
- dagw 10y agoAlthough not really a smoothie, I find that I can easily eat twice as many potatoes if they're mashed than if they're simply boiled. So I'm not entirely convinced.
- always_good 10y agoI can't remember one time in my life that I've slammed down the smoothie glass and gone "boy am I satiated and satisfied!"
- plaguuuuuu 10y agoI've experienced the opposite before.. after having a smoothie with probably 5 bananas in it, I was hungry a couple of hours afterwards. Probably due to the sugar content. I don't think this makes banana smoothies healthy either. Just things like congee, or like... blending steak and veggies into a drinking cup, or something.
- obmelvin 10y agoBananas and smoothied are very good for you. But it partly depends what you're doing. They're great for inclusion liver glucose levels to fuel a workout
- CuriouslyC 10y agoAs far as fruit goes bananas are the least healthy. They don't have a lot in the way of vitamins, and some people have a larger insulin response to bananas than cookies.
- handedness 10y agoYMMV.
- senectus1 10y agoanyone ever seen a guide to dairy free blended food recipes?
- madez 10y agoYou can use palm or coconut fat as a butter replacement and blended soaked nuts as a cream replacement. It might not taste the same, but it's edible at least.
- leonroy 10y agoA good one which I personally started out with as a base is a large handful or two of spinach leaves and a ripe banana blended with some water. From there on you can make a pretty creamy and healthy smoothie, just add almonds, dates, berries, etc. to create variants.
- Chos89 10y agoJust use the search term "blended" and "vegan" and you'll find a ton
- fsloth 10y agoCan't you blend anything you want? If it's too thick just add water.
- peteretep 10y agoPutting together several ideas in this article, it should be possible to drink a small amount of calorifically dense liquid that's heavier than and doesn't mix well with water, and then a lot of water, to quickly kill off hunger. Might be useful to stop binging before a meal out.
- xinyhn 10y agoNot endorsing in anyway just had heard a similar concept before although it's based on different reasons... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shangri-La_Diet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shangri-La_Diet
- beaconstudios 10y agoit reads like another fad diet with a magical "newly discovered science" (with no studies) backing.
- beagle3 10y agoThe safety is trivial, the cost is minuscule. The worst thing the critics say about it is that "it wasn't peer reviewed or done in a big study". Indeed, it wasn't - but asking for it in this case is simply cargo cult. Most diets, whether tested in a large scale study or a small one, don't work equally well (if at all) on all participants - you'll notice that more often than not the only thing reported is the average weight loss, and that's usually because at least one participant didn't lose anything (or even gained). The Shangri-La diet actually followed from experimental results in rats and people, which Roberts published, for free, on his own website[0], with all rationale, all the references you can ask for, and a description of his personal experience. This paper became very popular, but is too detailed for most people, that a publisher approached Roberts with a request to write a simplified version for lay people, and it is this book version that became an NYTimes best seller. "No backing studies" in this case is knee jerk reaction -- when you can just try yourself at essentially zero cost and zero risk. Personally, it worked for me when I tried it; Roberts collected anecdotes from people on his website, urging anyone who tried to report starting and then their progress; IIRC, he assumed anyone who started and didn't report progress (there weren't many) as "didn't work", and after a year or so, it had ~80% success rate. [0] http://media.sethroberts.net/about/whatmakesfoodfattening.pdf http://media.sethroberts.net/about/whatmakesfoodfattening.pd...
- sn41 10y agoKhichdi (and other forms - Bisi Bele Bath, Sambar sadam etc.) is a recipe of rice, lentils and vegetables eaten by a lot of manual laborers (and babies) in India. Perhaps due to the same reason. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khichdi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khichdi And in poorer times, rice was eaten as Congee. With increasing wealth, this healthy food is now rarely served in homes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congee https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congee
- signal11 10y agoI think the issue with these is that they're very carb-rich. I've bought one of the Nutri-bullet type blenders and quite enjoy home-made smoothies; I eat far more fruit and veg than I'd have ordinarily.
- sn41 10y agodo you cook the vegetables? or are they blended raw?
- magic_beans 10y agoI like to blend raw spinach + raw kale + banana + apple + peanut/almond butter. Delicious. If you're new to green smoothies I'd suggest: 1 cup raw spinach + 1 green apple + 1 banana + 1 tbsp almond/coconut/peanut butter. You won't even taste the spinach, I promise.
- signal11 10y agoUsually raw. I sometimes steam kale and always blanch broccoli.
- marricks 10y agoLentils are high protein so it should be a good complete meal. What's wrong with carbs anyways, hype now is that refined sugar are bad nowadays, which seems closer to the truth.
- 10y ago