Big Food uses our hardwired drives for dietary diversity to us.
How have we evolved to solve the difficult task of choosing a diet that supplies all the essential nutrients? Diet diversity. Eating a variety of foods increases the chances of hitting every base. If we only ate for pleasure, we might stick to our favorite foods to eliminate everyone else, but we have an innate tendency to switch things up.
Researchers found that even if one of the favorites is one selected, research participants would eat more calories if they serve three different yogurt flavors in just one. Therefore, variations can surpass the senses. They don’t call it the spice of life for anything.
It seems that we were born. Studies on newly weaned infants dating back almost a century ago show that babies naturally choose a variety of foods over their preferred food. This tendency appears to be driven by a phenomenon known as sensory-specific satiety.
Researchers found that “within two minutes of eating the test meal, the taste, smell, texture and appearance of the edible food is significantly reduced compared to foods that do not exist in the meal.” Consider that the first bite of chocolate is better than the last bite. Our body tires seek novelty by rekindling their appetite with the same sensations of tires and presenting new foods. This helps explain the “dessert effect.” “Dessert Effect” can be stuffed into gills, but once the dessert arrives you will get a second wind. What our ancient ancestors adapted to maintain nutritional validity could be maladapted in the age of obesity.
When study participants ate “various four course meals,” they burned 60% more calories than those fed the same food in each course. It’s not just boring. Our bodies have different physiological reactions.
In my video below and in my video, as shown at 2:13, how variations make the sense of sensation and lead to overeating, researchers gave people a squirt of lemon juice, and the salivary glands reacted with a squirt of saliva. However, when they were given 10 times in a row of lemon juice, they spit more and more each time. However, when they got the same amount of lime juice, their saliva production quickly spiked. We are curing to react differently to new foods.
Whether the food is on the same plate, on the same meal or on the day that follows, the more diversity the more likely you are to eat. When my kids had the same Mac and cheese dinner for five days in a row, they ended up eating hundreds of calories by the fifth day.
Simply switching food shapes can lead to overeating. When the kids had a second mac and cheese, they ate quite a lot when the noodles changed from elbow macaroni to spiral. People are said to eat up to 77% M&M if they are presented with 10 colors rather than 7, even though all colors are the same. “Therefore, it is clear that the greater the food difference, the greater the strengthening of intake.” Alternating between sweet and flavored foods has the effect of stimulating appetite. Do you think adding diet soda to your fast food diet, for example, can lead to overconsumption?
The incredible array of modern food choices may be one of the factors that we conspire to undermine our appetite control. There are currently tens of thousands of different foods on sale.
The so-called supermarket diet is one of the most successful ways to fatten a rat. Researchers tried high-calorie food pellets, but rats ate too much to compensate. So, we “used more extreme meals to raise delicious foods we bought at a nearby supermarket,” including dishes such as cookies, candies, bacon and cheese, as well as animals. The human equivalent that maximizes experimental weight gain is called cafeteria diet.
This is the kind of opposite of the original food distribution device I mentioned previously. Instead of the bland liquids that are all-you-can-eat, researchers provided free and hard-to-eat access to an elaborate vending machine with 40 trays with dizzy foods such as pastries and fries. Participants are unable to maintain an energy balance and consistently consume more than 120% of their calorie requirements.
Our understanding of sensory-specific satiety can be used to help people gain weight, but how can we use it for our benefit? For example, will limiting various unhealthy snacks help people lose weight? We tried two randomized controlled trials and were unable to show significant weight loss due to reduced variety, but we were unable to let people make more dents in their diet either. In my video, it seems that just reducing one or two snack types is not enough to make many differences. More dramatic changes may be required. This will be explained next.
