That's Fit

Dr. Barbara Rolls, a nutrition specialist at Penn State, explains in her book The Volumetrics Eating Plan that it is possible to feel fuller by eating fewer calories. To do so, according to Dr. Rolls, the key is to figure out the energy density of food.

To figure out energy density, all you need to be able to do is one basic calculation: Divide the number of calories by the number of grams in the serving size. The lower the resulting number, the better the food and the more of it you can eat without worring too much about gaining weight.

In her book, Dr. Rolls also applies this logic when pointing out the benefit of adding two specific elements to our food: Air and Water. Huh? It works like this - people who blended their smoothies for twice as long as necessary ate 12 percent less and felt fuller than people who blended their smoothies for a shorter period of time. This was because the excessive blending caused more air bubbles to form in the smoothies, thereby increasing its overall volume with a zero-calorie additive (which would be the air). Water works the same way. Adding lettuce or tomato on top of a healthy burger has a similar effect, for the water increases the volume of the meal without adding any substantial amount of calories.

It seems to be a very interesting concept. If any of you have read Dr. Rolls' book, we'd all be interested to hear your feedback.