Studies by Australian researcher Dr. Susanna Holt and her associates at the University of Sydney have developed one of the most exciting diet concepts ever. Called, the “Satiety Index,” Holt’s tool ranks different foods on their ability to satisfy hunger.
Holt drew up the Satiety Index by feeding 240-calorie portions of 38 different foods to volunteers. The foods were served from under a hood to minimize the influence of appearance, and, if possible, they were served at the same temperature and in the same size chunks.
After eating, the volunteers told the scientists what their appetite ratings were, but they were not allowed anything else for the next two hours. Then, after two hours, they were then allowed to eat from a small buffet, where the scientists measured how much they nibbled from a variety of other foods. Their consumption was closely monitored, and every 15 minutes they were questioned about their hunger to see if their subjective impression of satisfaction matched their eating behavior.
Using white bread as the baseline of 100, 38 different foods were ranked. In other words, foods scoring higher than 100 are more satisfying than white bread and those under 100 are less satisfying.
(apologies for the top row – having a little trouble with the HTML – will correct it as soon as I can).
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Surprising Findings from the Satiety Index
Potatoes are nearly 3 times more filling than white pasta!
Popcorn is nearly as filling as whole-meal bread.
Popcorn is more filling than All-Bran.
Sugar Puffs are more filling than white pasta and the same as brown rice!
Sugar Puffs are more filling than Special K!
Cookies are more filling than white pasta, cornflakes, bananas, Special K, muesli, yogurt, ice-cream and crisps!
Bananas are only about as filling as french-fries.
French-fries are more filling than white bread and muesli and yogurt!
White bread is only slightly more filling than ice-cream.
Ice-cream is a more filling sweet snack than chocolate bars and cakes.
Crisps are more filling than chocolate bars and cakes.
Peanuts are less filling than ice-cream and crisps.
Not that surprising – but chocolate bars and cakes are the least filling (therefore worst food choices for weight-loss) of all the foods.
You can read my analysis of these findings in my post; ‘Lessons Learned from the Satiety Index – Which Food Properties Are Most Important For Filling Us Up For Less Calories?’
From what we know about how different food properties affect the satiety of different foods (as discussed in the post just mentioned above), low-fat cheeses, such as Feta, Ricotta and goat’s cheese would probably have something closer in satiety score to baked beans or beef, when we consider the extremely detrimental effects of high fat content for a food’s satiety score. (We can see this when we compare the satiety score for boiled potatoes with that of french-fries; 323% compared to 116%.)
Lower fat versions of ice-cream would have a higher satiety score too – perhaps closer to that of white pasta or cookies.
This would be provided that the fat calories had not been replaced by extra sugar calories in the product.
You could check this by comparing the calories per 100g for the low fat version with the calories per 100g for the high fat version. The low fat version should have less calories per 100g.
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