Super-Satiation: New 'Designer Foods' To Make Us Fuller For Longer

Satiation is about the signalling process that your digestive system uses to let your brain know when you've had enough to eat. In many people, this satiation system is disordered by habitually eating too much, and it's a picture that's further complicated by the fact that different macronutrients have different satiation signalling effects. That's been known for a long time, and most sensible eating plans will factor it in. Essentially, fat has almost no effect on feelings of satiation and carbohydrates not much, which is why it's so easy to eat a whole bag of potato chips, or a kilo of chocolate. It's not so easy to eat a thousand calories of meat or fish, because the strongest satiation signals come from protein. In a world of high-carb, mid-fat, low-protein diets, though, we're eating to grow, because we're eating a high-calorie, low-satiation diet.

Typically, dietary changes work best when they allow people to basically go on eating what they were eating already. Vegetarianism became far easier when vegeburgers and other meat-substitutes came of age. So it's probably a bad idea to hope for a change in the way we all eat that's consumer-led. It's more likely that we'll look for fixes that allow us to keep our current dietary tastes.

Which brings us to the macronutrient I didn't meantion earlier: starch.

Starches are long-chain carbohydrates, but they don't always behave that way in our digestive systems. Some starches are absorbed slowly; others are too tough. Our stomachs can't break them down. So instead they pass through our digestive systems as what used to be called "roughage," or indigestible fiber. 

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Just like all dietary fiber, digestible or not, they contribute to feelings of satiety by literally "filling you up," and your body senses the aditional bulk in your stomach and reacts accordingly.

But there's more.

These undigested starches are the food for some of the bacteria that live in our guts, and those bacteria are pretty important.

And now scientists working out of the University of Liverpool in the UK, as well as other European research sites, think they may have discovered a way to make it easier for people to control their weight by manipulating how well-fed their gut bacteria are. It turns out that those same gut bacteria that have so many other health benefits also partially control how full you feel.

The key is resistant starch.

Resistant Starch, Fullness And Weight Loss

Resistant starch is a kind of long-chain carbohdrate that makes it almost, but not quite, all the way through the digestive system. And when it does finally stop resisting, it's not our digestive system, per se, that gets the job done. Resistant starch survives the stomach and the enzyme-rich small intestine virtually unscathed, only to be eaten in the large intestine by gut bacteria. And when they eat the resistant starch, the bacteria release short-chain fatty acids, which send messages to the brain that starch is reaching the lower digestive tract without being digested. That in turn functions as a satiety signal, telling the brain you can stop eating now.

A group of 11 food ompanies and seven European universities have together formed the SATIN project to investigate the effects of resistant starch and try to find ways of taking advantage of its effect on satiety signalling. 

Meanwhile another group working out of the UK, based in Imperial College, London, has been working with s similar idea. This time, though, the team, led by Gary Frost, has been developing breads and smoothies that contain the short-chain fatty acids themselves. In initial trials, the fatty acid-enhanced foods did help peoplereduce their weight, suggesting that there could be a role for resistant starches or their products in weight loss. 

Finally, a mesage that centers less around new foods and more around self-reliance and education is coming from James Stubbs from the University of Derby. Stubbs thinks the biggest problem isn't that food isn't fillling enough: it's that people don't know how filling foods are. 

Stubbs is working with Slimming World to do something about that,creating a satiety index people can use to find out what in some ways is the most important metric about food: not how many calories it contains, or its contribution to your recommended daily zinc intake, but satiety: how full it makes you feel.

So should you wait until SATIN and Slimming World have their new products on the shelves, or is there something you can do now to take advantage of the effects of resistant starches?

Fortunately, you have everything you need to make your very own short chain fatty acids. 

Resistant starches are found naturally in lentils, pulses and beans, but one easy way tomanufacture them is to cook tradidional starchy staples and then let them cool. Rice, pasta and potatoes will all supply you with resistant starches if you do this, turning the food groups that have been blamed for obesity into the cure.  

What's even better is that if you reheat those foods, the resistant starches remain intact. So you can cool and reheat your starchy foods and continue to enjoy a similar diet, while boosting satiation signalling and halping yourself to lose weight.

Does that mean you should?

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Ideally, you'd make some dietary changes at the same time. Shifting to a higher protein, more vegetable-rich diet is the best choice if you can. But everything has to be done inb steps you can stick with, and if reheating your starches helps you in the here and now, that's gret.

Try it, and let me know how you get on in the comments section!