Thunder wondersWith the holiday approaching, we will be sitting at the table again soon. Delicious dishes appear, and when she thinks you are completely full, your aunt comes with a delicious dessert. Fortunately, you always have room for dessert!
Judith Schooling
source:
Thunder wonders
But how will you still feel like dessert when you’ve already eaten a full dinner? Research shows that there is a psychological and physiological explanation for this.
Psychological candy stomach
A large part of the phenomenon of sensory saturation can be explained. This means that when you eat a lot of food with a certain taste, you do not need to eat more of it. You can still feel the urge to eat different taste.
This is mainly due to “habituation”; The alarm weakens if you are exposed to it frequently. This happens with all kinds of sensory perceptions, such as the feeling of your clothes on your body. Not nice if you are constantly aware of it. Something similar happens when you eat a lot of food that tastes the same: the reward you experience becomes less and less.
If you vary in the meal, you tend to eat more than you eat if you do not vary: up to 60 percent more!
Eating something that tastes completely different gives a new incentive. Food again has a beneficial effect and therefore tastes very tasty. Very useful from an evolutionary point of view. Eating a varied diet ensures that you get different types of nutrients. Less beneficial, it may also lead you to tend to eat more if you differ in the meal than if you do not: up to 60 percent more!
brain activity
Sensory satiety can also be found in the brain: An experiment in which brain scans were taken while eating chocolate showed that the orbitofrontal cortex — a brain region involved in processing taste — plays a role in particular. The more chocolate the participants ate, the less brain activity was observed in the reward-related region while tasting the chocolate.
However, there was more activity in the aversion-related department. So the reward for taste not only decreases, but also begins to disappoint you.
A little more space in your stomach
The fullness of your stomach also determines how full you feel. As soon as your tongue signals a new, rewarding taste, your body will begin to prepare for the arrival of this good stuff. This ensures, among other things, that the stomach wall is relaxed and that there is more space in your stomach. This effect is greater when there is a lot of sugar in the food. So your stomach frees up more space when you start eating dessert!
It all comes in handy during the holidays: You can also enjoy delicious ice cream sundaes for your uncle or aunt after dinner. But you can also use this principle in a healthy way in the New Year: If you alternate healthy snacks, this ensures that you will eat more healthy products. So kidding yourself a little…
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