Turns Out Your Appetite Gets Bored, and You Can Put That to Good Use.

By Mark J Kaylor

You’ve probably felt it: too full for another bite of dinner, yet somehow there’s room for dessert. Researchers call it sensory-specific satiety. As you eat one food, your desire for that particular taste and texture fades faster than your hunger overall, and a new flavor partly wakes your appetite back up. It likely helped our ancestors eat a wider range of nutrients.

Penn State researchers led by Barbara Rolls put this to work. In a study of 66 adults, they served pasta with either a single vegetable or a mix of broccoli, carrots, and snap peas. With the mix, people ate about 48 grams more vegetables, over half a serving, than with any single vegetable. They even ate more than when served their personal favorite alone.

The same instinct works the other way too, which is part of why snack aisles offer so many flavors. So use it where it helps: add variety where you want to eat more, like vegetables, and keep things simple where you’d like to eat less.

Turns out boredom can be a vegetable’s best friend.

Reference: Meengs JS, Roe LS, Rolls BJ. Vegetable variety: an effective strategy to increase vegetable intake in adults. Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. 2012;112(8):1211-1215.