Nestle Developing Satiety-Inducing Food To Combat Obesity

I recently ran across this post on PSFK about the recent Wall Street Journal concerning Nestle‘s effort to develop satiety-inducing food in an effort to combat obesity. How awesome would that be if it really worked?!

 

Researchers from Nestle are working on creating foods that trick the stomach into feeling full earlier or for longer. Intended as a fat-fighting food to target obese people, it will register in our ‘gut brain’ (a network of nerve cells in the stomach) a feeling of fullness with less food, which in turn communicates this state to the brain, halting the urge to eat any more.

By communicating through neural signals, the gut brain constantly sends messages to the primary big brain to indicate hunger or the feeling of being satiated. Scientists hope that by developing satiety-inducing foods which will target key neural signals sent by the gut brain, they would be able to help people curb their hunger and remain healthy.

From the Wall Street Journal:

The body is in a state of continual hunger—its default position. But several factors work to curtail the hunger instinct, such as the presence of food in the digestive tract, or the flow of nutrients in the blood. When these satiety factors dissipate, the body again demands food.

In the quest to balance hunger and satiety, the gut brain and big brain communicate via neural signals. When food enters the stomach, the stomach stretches, and the gut brain sends a neural message to the big brain. The gut brain also knows when there are nutrients in the gastrointestinal tract, stimulating the release of peptides into the blood and resulting in another message to the brain.

 I really believe it is only a matter of time before this is available.  Either in pill or in food form, a product like this could be as important as the polio vaccines were in the 1950's.  It will be an answer to a world wide epidemic and make life so much better for us.

One of the things I have often wondered about.  When it is possible for everyone to be slender, will slender bodies still be valued?

“When it is possible for everyone to be slender, will slender bodies still be valued?”

It would be nice if we could all be slender for health reasons.

I read somewhere that in human kind’s early history, very voluptuous people were regarded as highly desirable by society, and skinny people were undesirable.  I don’t know if it is true or not.  It would be nice if we could get to a place where people were desirable or undesirable based on their hearts and minds, but that’s not going to happen, is it?

 

~it would be nice if we could get to a place where people were desirable or undesirable based on their hearts and minds~

If only that were how it worked! :-( There are some very shallow people out there!

And as far as your comment about in early  history, Joy Behar used to do a comedy bit about a model needing to put on a few pounds for a sitting with an artist, lol.

That is still true in the Middle East and in India. The thought proccess is that if the woman is really large then her husband/family is wealthy because they can afford to feed her well.

I was in Kuwait for 8 years. I had my DS surgery over there. Prior to the surgery I wa**** on by Kuwait men right and left. After I lost the weight they were no longer interested.

Apparantly they are not up todate on how many of us got fat off of the $1 menu! Lol.

Trust me. They are learning fast. When I left Kuwait had McDonalds, Burger King, Applebee's, Chili's, TGI Fridays, Popeye's, KFC, Church's (but they call it Texas Chicken), Nathan's Hot Dogs, Subway, Pizza Hut, Pizza Inn, Papa John's, Domino's and Taco Bell had just come in.

Interesting point. What if we lived in a world where fat was the "norm" and skinny ppl were less desirable and discriminated against?!

That would be wonderful if it really worked!  It could help end pain and injuries related to obesity, and make people healthier.  It could save lives.

Hope it works better than those "Full Bars"!