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Subscribe to RSSWhen you think you're eating something indulgent, you feel satisfied sooner than when you consume a food that's supposedly better for you, reveals a new study.
Yale University researchers wanted to find out if your frame of mind -- your beliefs and expectations -- while eating a food could influence your body's physiology more than its actual nutritional value. So, they measured levels of ghrelin, a hormone released in the stomach in response to hunger.
When the blood has high levels of ghrelin, the "hunger hormone," it sends signals to the brain to let it know you want food. As you chow down, ghrelin levels decrease, which reduces appetite and makes you feel full.
To see whether ghrelin levels were affected by a person's expectations of a food, they rounded up 46 normal weight or plumper volunteers (ages 18 to 35). Participants were told they would be testing two new milkshakes: One was labeled as a high fat, 620-calorie "indulgent" shake; the other was a no-fat 140-calorie sensible, or "sensi-shake."
The trick was that both were the same 380-calorie french vanilla milkshakes disguised in different packaging.
While volunteers rated the "sensi-shake" as healthier than the "indulgent" shake and had a good-for-you mindset before drinking it, their bodies told a different story. Ghrelin levels were flat or slightly higher while tasting it, suggesting they were not physiologically satisfied with the beverage.
When participants drank the "indulgent" shake, whose label described it as "heaven in a bottle" and the "decadence you deserve," ghrelin levels steeply increased in anticipation of it, followed by a dramatically steep decline after consuming the creamy drink. This indicates they craved the drink more and were more satisfied afterward. Interestingly, though, hunger levels showed little change after either drink. A large drop in ghrelin levels should be accompanied by a large drop in hunger levels.
Researchers had expected that drinking the sensible shake would produce a sharper reduction in ghrelin levels, but the exact opposite occurred.
"The mindset of 'sensibility' or 'restraint' when eating -- no matter what we're eating -- might be compromising our body's physiological response, counteracting our hard work at dieting," says Alia Crum, a clinical psychologist at Yale University in New Haven, Conn., and the study's lead author.
And that's the mindset often adopted when trying to lose or maintain weight. "People should still work to eat healthy," suggests Crum, "but do so in a mindset of indulgence." By this she means believing a food will be enough to indulge your nutritional and hunger needs.
Unhealthy foods that market their healthy virtues (think: multigrain snack chips or chocolate-covered granola bars) may be doubly damaging. Their labels may be misleading and inaccurate but they can also affect people's perception of the food and the body's response to it, explains Crum.
This study appears online in Health Psychology.
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Healthy = tasteless mush.
Since giving up smoking 4 1/2 years ago I am still looking for a decent cup of coffee, let alone tasty food.
Hmmm......after my wife quit smoking and gotten over physical and mental withdrawal she said she had forgotten how good food tasted and smelled - including coffee. She felt that the smoke/tar had dulled her taste.
I don't think there is such a thing as health food except in the imagination of marketers and advertisers. There certainly is "unhealthy" food that should be avoided - I don't think anybody should eat a diet consisting only of 100% hog jowls....but certainly people have happily done so when the alternatives were eating dirt for example or dry leaves
I guess if you live in prison. I eat nothing but plants and dairy, it's all how you prepare it. If you've spent your entire life eating crap then yea, healthy will taste bad because you are not accustom to it and you don't know how to properly prepare it.
In my experience coffee tastes a little better now but that doesn't make up for the satisfaction derived from smoking while drinking it.
However, when I stir in a little "ex-smoker smugness" that coffee starts to taste mighty good indeed.
Very cool, yet another sign of the power of the mind to drastically affect our health. Sounds like adding 'decadent' to every low-calorie food label might help our nation's size problem!
"health food" is so unsatisfying because it tastes like cr ap. Now, can I get some money to prove that with a study of previous studies?
Did you even read the article? If so it must have gone right over your head. This wasn't about how food tastes, its about how a persons expectations influence their bodies physiological reactions...
zijws -
Illiterates already have their mind made up about everything. They just pretend to read to lie to themselves that they're "smart".
Health food does not have to taste like crap. Try any of the recipes from "Clean Eating" or "Cooking Light" which my wife cooks on a regular basis and you'll be pleasantly surprised. Problem is most people's palates are corrupted by the American diet which is loaded with sodium (salt) and fat. The body craves what it's used to. Try eating healthy for a few weeks and you'll be surprised how the flavors of fruits, vegetables, lean proteins, and vegetables come to life.
Food that's bad for you is as much an addiction as coffee, cigarettes, or anything else. Once you give it up (if you can) you won't miss it much. After more than a year of healthy and clean eating, my body quite literally rejects high fat and high sodium foods. I don't miss them at all.
I think the people who hold the conception that healthy eating is tasteless eating never eat healthy or tried it for themselves.
I consider myself a fairly healthy eater. I became a vegetarian 5 years ago and mainly include whole and organic foods in my diet, eating processed (albiet healther options found in Whole Foods) foods at a miminum. And I think the food I eat now tastes MUCH BETTER than the crap I used to eat. And my overall mood is much better, too. It's good for the body, soul, and mind! I can't say the same about the average American diet!
But it takes some time to learn how to make better food/meals for yourself. It can be done. It's hard to jump into it all of a sudden. While I made this move about 5 years ago, I gradually made the transition over several years before.
healthy food does not taste like crap and is not unsatisfying. i am VERY much looking forward to my tomato soup and chickpea salad for lunch. our society is SOOOO screwed up...
Birdie Girl - If that tomato soup comes from a can, then it is absolutely loaded with sodium. Foods labeled as "healthy" are not necessarily good for you. The only way to try to consume a better diet is to read labels and prepare your own meals from scratch using fresh ingredients.
scales
What caused you to jump to the conclusion that the tomato soup came from a can? Do you also think that the chickpea salad came from a can? I'm sure that Birdie Girl understands that homemade tomato soup is not only healthier and tastier than canned soup, it is also very easy to prepare.
don97524 - when did you talk to Birdie Girl to ask where her soup came from? For those of you with reading comprehension deficits, you should reread my post and take note of the fact that I stated, "If that tomato soup comes from a can". I did not assume that it came from a can. I made the correct statement that IF it came from a can, it is loaded with sodium. Also, what proof do you have the the chickpea salad isn't from the local grocery store deli, in which case no one knows how much sodium, fat, etc., that it might contain. Birdie Girl did not specify who made her food, so what caused you to jump to the conclusion that she made it herself?
Yes, I also noticed you said "if". Still, your point is valid. When my doctor told me I had to change my diet, with much less sodium, I understood the implications of having high blood pressure and the dangerous role sodium plays. At first, my wife would buy all the "heart healthy" and reduced or low sodium products available, but to our dismay, the "low sodium" products were really not that low.
After seeing what was available at the markets, my wife started making homemade soups and meals from scratch (a real treat for me) so we could better regulate my sodium intake. The health benefits of this change has been very good for both of us, because fat, chloestorol and LdL's were greartly reduced.
It was a while before I got used to less salt in my diet, but health-wise, my BP is down substantially.
Bottom line is, it really does make a difference in how you feel (physically) when you adjust your eating habits to a include a regimen of healthy eating. Instead of a donut or sweet-roll in the morning, I may enjoy a bowl of oatmeal with brown sugar and honey. This satisfies the craving for something sweet with something a little better for me. I still get to indulge in some decadent eating like Burger-King or Wendy's once or twice a month, but not nearly the three or four times a week I was used to. I think anyone who complains about the choices or variety (or lack of) have not yet experimented with being literally, tastefully creative.
Apparently some people just really aren't hungry enough. I've heard that starving people don't have this problem.
So, Picard, do you have a point? You seem to suggest that rather than eating a healthy diet and preparing food from scratch the real solution is to starve yourself until you are hungry enough for taste not to matter. Or perhaps you don't have any point at all.
Picard meant no such thing.
The point is well taken, that in third world countries people are starving and we are so well-fed that we have the luxury of such a discussion as this one.
I'd like to see a similar test using real sugar vs high fructose corn syrup.
HFCS is said to not signal the body that it's satiated the way sugar does...would be interesting to see which one is more satisfying in a milkshake.
You don't live longer by eating "health food", it just seems longer!
Seriously, People's bodies need fat and salt and carbs, all the things we are told are bad for us.The key is MODERATION. People who rinse their hamburger after cooking it really need to loosen up.
Someone told me "Oh, tofu is good if you do this or that to it." I don't want to eat anything that you have to doctor up in order for it to taste good. And carob is a joke! There is NO substitute for real chocolate!
There are many things that need to be "doctored" to taste good -- it's called cooking with seasoning. McDonalds "undoctored" would be so bland (they don't naturally have all that fat and sodium), as would many "undoctored" foods.
Make tofu just as fat and full of sodium as McDonalds and people would have a different view of tofu.
Well, I didn't exactly need a study to tell me this (that what you think about food affects how it tastes)! At the same time, some foods aren't going to taste good no matter how indulgent you say they are! (eg, certain "fat free" cookies, "carb free" pasta, etc) I'm not going to enter the contest of who eats the healthiest, especially since there are so many different definitions of what is "healthy"; but I agree that our bodies need balanced nutrition, including fats, salt, and carbs-all in moderation, of course, in addition to all those veggies and fruits. I've said many times before that labelling certain foods as "bad" or "forbidden" sounds more like an eating disorder than a diet-and I should know: I have been treated for anorexia and other eating disorders.
I'll think of my cucumber as filet mignon next time and hopefully this will work ;)
Very true that major brands do give out samples on their products, search online for "123 Get Samples" we just got ours today. You wont need CC.
Attitude can make a real difference. I actually prefer the taste of much of what is called "healthy". I absolutely prefer whole grains, lots of greens and other veggies.. have since I was very small. I think if you have an expectation of it being good but not necessarily "indulgent", you may have a negative reaction.
P.S. - I do like a great dessert once in a while and can enjoy it.
It isn't a rule like that: "if you believe you are eating healthy food, it seems less satifying"... with people like me, it is the opposite to that.