Seth Roberts’ What Makes Food Fattening? is fascinating:
The theory takes a familiar idea — body fat is regulated by a system with a set point — and adds two rules about how the set point changes. One rule is that calorie-associated flavors raise the set point — the stronger the association, the greater the increase. The other rule is that these increases are superimposed on a steady decline — the greater the set point, the faster the decline. A steady state is reached when the rate of flavor-generated increases equals the rate of decline. A food is fattening (raises the set point) to the extent its flavor is associated with calories. The strongest flavor-calorie associations will occur, learning research implies, when four things are true: (a) the flavor is strong and complex flavor; (b) the food is digested quickly; (c) the food is eaten repeatedly; and (d) the flavor is exactly the same from one instance to the next. These four traits combine in a multiplicative way in the sense that if one is entirely absent, the food will not raise the set point at all.
His advice:
The theory supports the common recommendation to avoid foods with a high glycemic index (e.g., Atkins, 1992; Montignac, 1999; Steward, Bethea, Andrews & Balart,1995) but also provides some unusual advice:
- Eat new foods. No food with a new flavor is fattening, the theory implies.
- Vary the flavor of foods eaten repeatedly. If products came with optional flavoring packets and consumers added varying amounts of the flavorings, this would produce variation in flavor. The results of Hirsch and Gallant-Sheen (2004) suggest the power of this advice.
- Consume calories with no flavor associations. Ingestion of calories with no flavor should lower the set point, the theory implies. The fructose-water results suggest that ingestion of a small fraction of one’s daily calorie intake this way may substantially reduce the set point.
Flavorless vegetable oils (vegetable oils, such as olive oil, from which all flavor molecules have been removed) are a possible source of calories without taste.