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NutrInsight • Satiety: from appetite sciences to food application
Satiety and goal directed behaviour
Satiety enhancement has also been suggested to facilitate a number of goal directed behaviours related to nutrition and body weight control. Managing dietary goals, such as setting out to achieve a healthier diet is determined, in part, by self-efficacy. This is a psychological construct that refers to an individual’s belief in their competence to act. Hunger management increases eating self-efficacy, so that healthy eating goals may be more easily achieved. Eating self-efficacy is a significant predictor of weight loss. Hunger management may help individuals resist the strong environmental and situational cues to over-consume.
A greater satiety effect of the total diet will reduce hunger dysphoria, decrease the motivation for “opportunistic” eating, and facilitate a better acceptance of reduced energy intakes. The enhanced post-ingestive satiety is likely to reinforce the liking for highly satiating foods and increase their reward value and acceptance. Overall these effects should facilitate a greater ease of dietary control, allowing both an improvement of diet quality and an improved potential for achieving weight management goals (Figure 2).
Data consistent with such effects have appeared in the scientific literature. Higher ratings of appetite (hunger and desire to eat) in the fasting state are associated with lower weight loss [Drapeau et al., 2007]. Perceived hunger predicts failure to lose weight in clinical trials [Womble et al., 2001] and is associated with weight regain post weight loss [Pasman et al., 1999]. Market research has also highlighted the key role of hunger and appetite sensations in the non-compliance to weight loss diets [Unilever Strategic Segmentation Study, 2007].
Satiety enhancement may increase compliance with a healthier diet. It can also increase compliance with a weight loss diet, since hunger and food cravings may impair compliance. In the context of a weight loss diet, targeting appetite using specific foods or meals of enhanced satiety power can be a means of managing hunger arising from periods of energy restriction. Over the years a number of potent pharmacological agents have been used to manage hunger and facilitate weight loss in obese patients (for example d-fenfluramine). These compounds enhance satiety (at least in short-term tests) and produce weight loss in long-term placebo-controlled weight management trials. Unlike pharmaceutical compounds, any appetite-reducing effects of specific foods or diets will be relatively subtle. At present, the evidence to demonstrate that non-pharmacological, dietary-induced satiety enhancement can produce significant weight loss remains inadequate.
Satiety and weight loss maintenance: the DIogENES project
Among the many putative benefits of satiety enhancement, a key long-term benefit may be assisting in the maintenance of body weight loss following a diet. Foods in the diet which are high in fibre, high in protein, and/or have functional ingredients to promote satiety are worthy of investigation to examine their potential benefits beyond short-term appetite effects. The DIOGENES study is a multi-centric European project in which the contribution of high-satiety foods to body weight maintenance over the long term has been investigated. Overweight adults (n=773) from eight European Union countries participated in the project. They initially lost 8% of their baseline body weight on a low-calorie diet providing 800 kcal a day. They were then randomised to one of five ad libitum diets in order to prevent weight regain over a 26-week period. Four weight maintenance diets were either high or low in protein and glycemic index (GI), according to a two-by-two factorial design, and were compared to one control standard diet.
The completion rate over 26 weeks and the maintenance of weight loss were highest with the high-protein, low GI maintenance diet [Larsen et al., 2010]. In this large European study, a modest increase in protein content and a modest decrease in the GI led to an improvement in study completion and maintenance of weight loss. This study confirms the benefits of higher satiety diets for the control of long term energy intake and for achieving weight management goals.
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