Geschatte leestijd: 3 minutenMisjudging a light meal can affect how much you eat at the next meal. Another reason to know what you eat and how much you consume.
A Light Meal: Omelette
You invite 26 people and have them come over for two days to eat an omelette for breakfast. One day you tell them it contains two eggs, the next day you say it contains four eggs. However, in reality, each omelette contains three eggs.
Then, four hours after breakfast on both days, you ask them how hungry they are. At that time, you also give them a tasty pasta lunch and keep track of how much pasta is eaten on both days. Additionally, you measure the total number of calories consumed on both days.
When British researchers conducted this experiment, they found that their subjects were hungrier four hours later and ate more when they thought they had eaten an omelette with two eggs that morning instead of four, and vice versa [1]. Moreover, more calories were consumed throughout the day when the meal was perceived as lighter.
So, the idea that they had had a (relatively) “light breakfast” that morning influenced their hunger and the amount of food eaten afterwards. Although various processes in the body are active before, during, and after a meal to regulate hunger and satiety, your personal perception of this also plays an important role.
Similar effects were seen in previous, comparable studies, but they involved beverages and liquid food and measured the effect for a shorter duration (up to three hours after the first meal).
Previous studies have shown that a person’s expectations can have an impact on their subsequent feelings of hunger and fullness and, to a degree, their later calorie consumption. Our work builds on this with the introduction of solid food and measured people’s subsequent consumption four hours later, a period of time more indicative of the gap between breakfast and lunch.
Steven Brown, Sheffield Hallam University
Hunger Is All in Your Head
The researchers wanted to verify whether the difference in hunger and the amount of pasta eaten during lunch were solely caused by the estimation of the number of eggs in the omelette. To do this, they also took blood samples from the subjects and looked at the levels of the so-called ‘hunger hormone’ ghrelin. This allowed them to exclude that the differences in hunger and amount of food eaten on both days were caused by a physical reaction to the food.
Light Meal = Knowing What You Eat
I often hear from people who want to lose weight: “But I don’t actually eat that much.” Similarly, people who struggle to gain weight often say: “Light meal? I can eat whatever I want, but I just can’t gain weight!”
However, when you ask them how many calories they consume daily, you usually get a blank stare. In reality, it often turns out that if you let them track their intake for a few days and then compare it to their goal and corresponding needs, there is a mismatch.
You’re simply eating too much or too little.
The incorrect estimation of the light meal you’re consuming, according to these studies, is also a self-reinforcing factor.
You misjudge how many calories are in the bagel and think two hours later: “Now I can have a bit more.” Apart from the fact that you already consumed more than you thought, it also leads you to eat more afterwards.
In our Fitsociety App, a lot of attention has been paid to easily and accurately tracking your nutrition for a reason. However, there’s a big difference between knowing nothing and knowing everything. You might not need to know exactly what you’re consuming right away, but having a mental reference value can be useful.
Spend some time once to look up the nutritional values of your favorite meals and snacks, and translate this into an easy unit for yourself. Translate that bagel into, for example, eggs or bananas. Based on the above studies, we can assume that you’ll feel less hungry and eat less when you find out that your favorite snack is equivalent to, for example, four eggs.
References
- British Psychological Society (BPS). “You are what you think you eat.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 7 September 2017.
