Along with the belief that “A calorie is a calorie”, another assumption was made: that any excess food can lead to gaining weight. Let’s analyze this for a second. Eating 500 calories from chocolate or ice cream may come easy at the end of an exhausting day. This amount of calories comes from a relatively small quantity of product and can easily make you have it all at once but you’d have to eat 5 apples in order to equal the same number of calories. Highly unlikely, right?

So, how come some foods trick us into overeating whereas for others our satiety receptors seem to work perfectly fine?

One of the most efficient methods to lose and maintain a healthy body weight is to understand and apply the principle of calorie density. This concept refers to the number of calories contained in different foods in a given equal quantity (usually 100 g/ml). For example, if you eat only apples, the caloric intake will vary according to the quantity of apples you eat alone. If you eat apples, pears and grapes, then 100 g of each fruit will contain a different number of calories. That sounds pretty simple but things get a little more complicated when it comes to processed foods.

The video below explains how processed foods manage to trick us into overeating:

Calorie density is influenced by the macronutrient content and food texture, therefore the indicators that determine it are fats and water content (the most/least caloric component of a food). (1) The higher the water content, the lower its calorie density and the other way around: the higher the content of fats, the greater the calorie density. At different ends we can place fruits and veggies (some of them containing more than 90% water) and fast-food products. (2)

Another aspect that differentiates the foods mentioned above is fiber content. Ether soluble or insoluble, fermentable or non-fermentable, fiber content correlates positively with the satiety level the food induces. (3)

The picture below shows you how different foods fill your stomach content. Maybe it is a bit clearer now why we feel full after just two apples and crave the second bag of crisps and still feel hungry.

Now what? Well, in theory things sound really well. In real life however, although we are highly aware that a natural, healthy nutrition is crucial to our physical and psychical welfare, we continue telling ourselves sweet lies: “yeah, but processed foods are so yummy, are not all that bad, are within reach, there’s no time for cooking” and so on.

This is it! No more excuses. Are you ready to sabotage your sabotaging mechanisms?