Large Meals Encourage Snacking?

[wosnes]

I'm reading Real Food Has Curves by Bruce Weinstein and Mark Scarbrough. In it they encourage readers to keep a food journal -- not daily, but once or twice a month just to give you an idea of what you're eating and see trends, etc.

They give an example and showed it to a nutritionist friend. This is what their lunch consisted of: 1 1/2 cups carrot-ginger soup with cooked wheatberries, 3-4 ounces smoked pork loin, 1/2-3/4 cup sauerkraut, and 1/2 medium potato and a noncaloric beverage.

Most of her comments were saved for our lunch -- which she found too large. "Are you working in the fields?" she asked. In fact, she said that our lunch's heft accounted for snacking in the afternoon. "A big lunch is ultimately energy-draining -- it takes a lot of energy to digest that food; so unless you plan for a siesta, your energy levels will likely fade. I sense that was happening as you both tried self-medicating (Mark with banana bread, Bruce with snacks and later coffee). Self-medicating with snacks, of course, doesn't really solve the problem.

Later they say

Watch the random eating. Notice when it's happening. Then go back to the meal before. Was it too large and so led to snacking? Or was it too small, just a salad without any variety of textures and flavors -- and thus nothing really satisfying in it? Hunger can be the response to both overeating and undereating.

That kind of explains why I'm hungry after eating a substantial breakfast -- and the Mediterranean habit of a siesta after the large noon meal (well, along with the fact that much of the year it's too hot to do anything in the afternoon!). I also nap nearly every day after lunch.

[sheepish]

The bit about satisfaction is really interesting. I've seen other research that has indicated that eating a variety of things at a meal makes you more satisfied and leaves you less hungry than eating the same number of calories worth of the same food. It certainly works for me - I can have quite a light lunch if I have a variety of different things in it.

[Spudd]

I must say I do find the same thing, only for me it's with breakfast. When I have an "English breakfast" with eggs, bacon, hash browns, toast, etc at a restaurant, I often find I get hungry sooner than when I have my usual bowl of cereal. I'll have to keep an eye on my lunches and see if by cutting them back a little it will actually have the opposite effect to what one would expect.

[Graham]

Strange-seeming idea - I agree with about half of it - eating a lot of carbs can certainly make me want a siesta - but a high protein meal tends to be energising, in my experience.

The big breakfast thing - I've had exactly opposite experience to Spudd - grapefruit, bacon, egg, mushrooms and toast are fine, porridge left me utterly desparate for food hours before lunch - neither were a sedative.

The basic idea of keeping a journal and looking back at the influence of a meal on how you behave later seems worthwhile.

I concluded long ago that stodge sent me to sleep, especially at lunch or dinner, but if I had a steak, even with fries, provided I didn't have dessert, I found lunch perked me up if I was feeling tired.

[wosnes]

I've found that a big breakfast -- no matter what type of food I eat -- has me eating all morning long. A big lunch -- again, no matter what type of food it is -- puts me to sleep. A big dinner leaves me craving dessert.

[storm fox]

Sounds like a blood sugar spike and crash to me, but what do I know?

[reinhard]

Interesting stuff...

But I wouldn't worry about large meals encouraging snacking. It's possible there is some shred of truth to this, but my guess is that the science is still very murky, and almost certainly not worth the extra complexity cost to bake into your system.

And although I've got nothing against food journaling except that I find it deathly boring, I'm not sure how informative doing it just a couple of times a month would be, because the fact that you are journaling will alter your behavior, so you're not really observing yourself as you normally eat.

Reinhard

[oolala53]

First of all, I can't believe the observer found that an especially large lunch.

I know that for binge eaters and bulimics, when unrestrained, overeating at a meal was more likely to lead to an episode later. However, bingeing has been my problem, but it is not a problem on N days. Just the pronouncement of one plate of food as the limit and the determination to wait 4-6 hours to eat has been enough for me not to snack.

I find if I have a larger proportion of fat at a meal and a similar volume, I don't get hungry as soon.

Lastly, the point is we each have to determine what amount, and I include volume in this, is going to be likely to satisfy us. (I'm just realizing that my routine from years of having a fair amount of raw and cooked vegetables at a meal, necessitating a fair amount of chewing but without a lot of heavy calories, is part of what leads to satiety FOR ME. I'm more likely to want to snack if I've had a meal in which I might have eaten less because the food was dense and I just didn't want that bloated feeling. But I may want a snack EVEN THOUGH I'M NOT ACTUALLY HUNGRY.) And, sometimes the same meal will have a different effect. We are not always going to be able to guess the perfect amount. The important thing is we will probably be right most of the time and it doesn't matter if we get a little hungry or get an urge to snack sometimes. NOT snacking takes precedent over desire. Eventually, that becomes the habit.