Item — HN Reader

The feeling of satiety is not just a function of how full your stomach is. It's also a function of blood sugar levels. If you were eating sugar, you would start feeling full a lot sooner than if you were eating mashed potatoes. As a result, you would eat less of it in volume. (This is why sweet things are almost always served as desert, so they have a "topping off the satiety" effect as opposed to "killing the appetite before the real meal" effect.)

The danger here is calorie-dense fatty foods. Things like almonds and cashews are ridiculously easy to overeat, because they take up relatively little space and have a very tiny effect on blood sugar levels.

edit: wow, why the downvotes?

2 comments

"The feeling of satiety is not just a function of how full your stomach is. It's also a function of blood sugar levels."

No, it is not. Satiety is a complex process mediated and regulated by a certain number of hormones. Leptin controls satiety, whilst the release of ghrelin induces the feeling of hunger. There is no difference between eating pure sugar and potatoes, as the latter breaks down mostly into glucose, anyway. Eating both will give a blood sugar spike but won't stop you from gorging on both unless your body promptly starts releasing leptin.

>The danger here is calorie-dense fatty foods. Things like almonds and cashews are ridiculously easy to overeat, because they take up relatively little space and have a very tiny effect on blood sugar levels.

I wouldn't say that's the danger. How many overweight people got that way because they eat too many cashews vs. guzzling liters of soda?

I should say it is a danger, rather than the danger. Poor wording on my part.

In any case, more people get fat off guzzling soda because soda is significantly cheaper, and are served in virtually every restaurant.

And soda (and beer, wine, milk, every liquid with sugar in it) doesn't provide any feeling of fullness. Our species hasn't had to evolve around caloric liquids until about 3000 years ago.