The Pace of Our Meals Doesn't Curb Snacking

I’ve always heard (and sometimes practiced) the dieting rhetoric that eating more slowly, compared to gobbling down a meal, will help keep your appetite satisfied longer and prevent overeating.  Well, a recent study from the Netherlands, featured in The Journal of Nutrition, set out to see whether this was actually true.  The researchers looked at the speed of consumption and its effect on the diners’ feelings of satiety and hunger and on the chemical or hormonal signals involved in appetite regulation.  The researchers also wanted to determine how the pace of a meal affects postprandial snacking.  The results were quite interesting. 

For the study, the researchers asked 38 young men and women to eat the same meal in a controlled test kitchen on two separate days.  The meal was a typical Dutch dinner of salad, macaroni with meat sauce, vegetable lasagna and raspberry pudding for dessert.  The first day was a “nonstaggered” meal eaten in 30 minutes and the second day was a “staggered” meal, with 20 to 25 minute breaks between courses.  Before, after and throughout the course of the meal, blood samples were taken to measure the level of hormones involved in appetite signaling and participants were asked how full or hungry they felt. 

The study found that when participants ate the drawn-out meal, their satiety hormones increased more gradually compared to the nonstaggered meal, when they spiked more rapidly.  Also, participants who had eaten the drawn-out meal rated their satiety higher and their hunger lower.  Ok, so this makes sense – you eat more slowly and your body feels more satiated.  No wonder this is what we’ve been told to do to curb our appetites.  However, the study took an interesting turn when it introduced a snack two and a half hours after the beginning of the meal.

When the diners were offered a full spread of Dutch treats, such as apple cake, chocolate-covered marshmallows, peanuts, chips and waffles, the slow diners ate only 10 percent fewer snack calories than when they had consumed their meal quickly.  Even the differences in hormone levels did not significantly affect how much of the sweet and salty snacks were consumed.  This suggests that no matter the pace of our meals, the availability of tempting snacks can override the body’s internal messages about when to stop eating.    

I think this study is really interesting because it points to the fact that the food environment around us can completely override the body’s natural signals.  No wonder we have an obesity epidemic!  You can find cheap snack foods on every corner.  As it seems that our biological safeguards against weight gain are being disabled, I even more fully realize that the fight to prevent obesity is an up-hill battle.  So yes, eating slowly can in fact make you feel fuller longer, but the minute you step outside temptation awaits.  If we can’t rely on our bodies to tell us when to stop eating, it’s a scary idea to think we’ll have to rely on the food industry.