Sensory Satisfaction: The Better a Food, the Better Your Waistline?

Delicious food can have a show-stopping effect in your body. Many chefs know it and strive for high pleasure impact through the scents, flavors and textures they create in their dishes. This sense of pleasure comes about in two ways: 1) the immediate feeling of enjoying a food when it's eaten, and 2) a longer-lasting sense of well-being afterward.

Fascinating research suggests that people will eat less if food serves up more pleasure when eating it (think quality vs. quantity). Conventional wisdom has it that we overeat because foods are so tasty, making it difficult for us to stop eating. But scientists in Copenhagen, Denmark, wondered if the opposite might be true. They believed overeating would more likely occur when eating ordinary-flavored food because, biologically, we're wired to keep eating until we achieve a certain level of pleasure, satisfaction or satiety from it.

The act of eating is driven by reward. We eat to achieve that sense of pleasure and will continue to eat until reward centers in our brain are satisfied. The researchers for this study wished to learn if high-quality, flavor-rich foods deliver a more potent punch to our senses and reward center and whether they do so more quickly than lesser-quality picks.

From their research using soup, the answer was yes. Eating a tasty soup provided more sensory pleasure than the blander version. Additional research suggests that the way foods taste to us may also affect how we metabolize and absorb their nutrients. The belief is that the more we enjoy the taste of a particular food, the better our body will absorb its nutrients. That's a win.

In part, our sense of pleasure and satisfaction from food is affected by our expectations of what we'll be eating. Teeing up desirable-sounding foods primes our appetite. If foods deliver great taste, our sense of satiety can be achieved more quickly, a greater sense of well-being is experienced afterward, and the risk for overeating is reduced. Layer in factors such as wholesomeness and healthfulness (for improved nutrient absorption) and you have the trifecta of goodness. Bon appétit!