Flavor, Texture Alter Satiety, Perception of Food

BRIGHTON, United KingdomLow-calorie foods may help people lose weight, but there is often a problem that people using them do not feel full. A new study published in BioMed Centrals open access journal Flavor, details how subtle manipulations of texture and creamy flavor can increase the expectation that a fruit yogurt drink will be filling and suppress hunger regardless of actual calorific content.

Researchers at the University of Sussex designed an experiment to first see whether adding the thickening agent tara gum increased the sensation of thickness, stickiness and creaminess of a yogurt drink, and then looked at how these affected expected fullness and expected satiety. The results showed that even people who are not trained in food tasting were able to accurately pick up subtle differences in drink texture even though the taste remained the same.

In the second phase of the experiment subjects rated how filling they expected a beverage to be by selecting a portion of pasta that they thought would have the same effect on their hunger as drinking a bottle of yogurt. On average the thick beverages and the creamy beverages were expected to be more filling than the thin or non-creamy versions, and enhancing the creamy Flavor of a thick drink further increased expected fullness. However, their contributions to expected satiety were not equalonly thickness (and not creaminess) had an effect on the expectation that a drink would suppress hunger over time.

Hunger and fullness are complicated issues because it is not just the calories in a food or drink that make it filling," said lead author Keri McCrickerd. Signals from the stomach are important but so too is how the drink feels in the mouth. In our study both creamy flavor and texture affected expected fullness, but only thickness seemed to affect whether hunger was expected to be satisfied. This may be because thick texture is a characteristic of food that we associate with being full. Consumer expectations are important and our study shows that consumers are sensitive to subtle changes in oral sensory characteristics of a drink, and that thick texture and creamy flavor can be manipulated to enhance expectations of fullness and satiety regardless of calories."