Food for Thought

Have you ever sat down to eat a pizza and devoured the entire thing, then wondered how you managed to stuff all of that food into your stomach? Well, I have and while I was reading Whole Living magazine the other day when I came across an interesting research study that confirmed my beliefs that certain foods contain appetite suppressing chemicals.

Scientists at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School discovered that, in animal studies, palmitic acid, a fancy word for the most common saturated fat on the planet, causes the brain to ignore appetite-suppressing hormones.

What this means is that when you eat foods containing high amounts of saturated fat, foods like pizza, meat, ice cream, butter, cheese, high fat dairy products, palm oil, palm kernel oil and coconut oil, you are a lot more likely to overeat because your brain isn't receiving the hormonal signals that tell you you're full.

This is why it is so important to practice moderation. Don't sit down with an entire pizza, instead allow yourself 1-2 slices then freeze the rest to make it harder to binge later. Don't sit down with the entire jug of ice cream, instead dish yourself out a bowl.

Don't eat more than one serving of red meat at a time. Limit your intake of high fat dairy products. Look for olive or canola oil based margarine spreads (avoid spreads with hydrogenated oils) rather than palm oil and palm kernel oil based spreads.

Another trick is to eat a low-fat salad or have a low-fat bowl of soup 20 minutes before you consume the high-fat food to help kick-start those appetite suppressing hormones.

And that, my friends, is Friday's food for thought.