Pass The Sweet Or Salty Flavor Crystals
Or “tastants,” as they are being called in the world of science. We all know that the senses of smell and taste are linked; what I didn’t know was that the olfactory nerve is in part what governs our feeling of satiety. (Also, according to this article, people who lose their senses of smell and taste tend to gain 10-20 pounds. No idea if this is true.)
To test out if enhanced flavor would have the opposite effect, the sciency people did a study showing that flavor crystals sprinkled on food resulted in weight loss.
In a study lasting 6 months, Hirsch and colleagues had 2,436 overweight or obese adults sprinkle a variety of calorie-free “tastant” crystals on the food they ate. They put the salt-free savory flavours — like cheddar cheese, onion, and ranch dressing — on salty foods and put sugar-free sweet crystal flavours — like cocoa, spearmint, banana, strawberry and malt — on sweet or neutral-tasting foods.
A control group of 100 volunteers used non-flavoured “placebo” crystals. Both groups were told not to change their eating or exercise patterns… [Tthe “tastant” group’s] average weight loss over a 6 month period was a little over 30 pounds or about 15% of their body weight versus 2 pounds in the control group.
There are a whole host of reasons why tastants would work, Hirsch said, “but the best hypothesis is that these powerful smells and tastes acted to enhance sensory-specific satiety.” They send messages to the brain that say “I’m full.”
So, interesting. (Even though the doctor blithely says diets don’t work “because people do not have the will power to succeed.” Way to be reductive there, doctor.) I’m curious about the concept though. Would you sprinkle cocoa or cheddar cheese crystals on your food? I would at least be curious to see what they taste like. But I would also be concerned about the questionable chemicals they no doubt contain. I mean, what do we know about these things? They are “crystals” that are most-likely crystal-shaped, and that’s all we got at this point. A little ill-defined, if you ask me!
Posted by mo pie
Filed under: Food, Science, Weight Loss
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I don’t know how well that theory would work outside the parameters of the experiment? Like a lot of these theories, it doesn’t allow for other factors to be involved with the weight loss or gain. I’m what’s known as a supertaster, hence my tastebuds already think the food went swimming in a bath of tastants, and I’m still obese. Satiety or the lack thereof isn’t the reason I became obese, so those “tastants” wouldn’t help or hinder me much either way.
When I lost part of my sense of smell late last year (thankfully mostly recovered now) I initially lost my appetite. Had no interest in eating as for me smell and taste were such a vital part of the eating experience. But, I’m sure there are others out there who do react with a desperate urge to eat more, trying to taste something/anything.
Isn’t this also merely adding on to the artificial boosting of flavours they already do with a multitude of foods?
Honestly, if I really thought they were safe for me to consume? Yeah, I’d probably try them. I can’t say for sure if I’d truly like them or not, but I’d probably give ’em a whirl. (I’m the kind of person that’ll try just about anything at least once, as long as I felt safe.)
I have a hard time believing that “flavor crystals” (isn’t there a commercial out there with that wording???) would be instrumental to one’s losing weight though. Not just from my own experience, but from the fact that we’ve had things like Sweet ‘N Low, Equal, and Splenda for years and years and YEARS and we have yet to hear that it’s been “instrumental” to someone’s weight loss.
So, it’s basically weight loss by MSG? Uh, no thanks…
MSG? Actually no.
Years ago I found that if I would spice up my dull boring diet foods, I liked them better and enjoyed them more. I just used all the spices I wanted (no salt) and it helped alot.
This product is the same idea, sans the spice racks…….oh and costs LOTS more.
An alternative explanation is that the crystals tasted revolting, so the people who were made to cover their food in synthetic cheese only ate as much as they could choke down.
Ha! Good point, MissPrism!
There’s already a diet out like that, the Flavor Spray diet.
Though I wonder if the crystals ended up more like the flavor point diet (if they ONLY got , say, cheddar and maple, and HAD to put one or the other on everything). Oh wait, it says above they had a variety. Hmm. Still, I like the “fake flavor = gross = I can’t eat any more of this” idea :-)
You know why don’t they work on stuff to make people healthier not thinner? Like crystals that are good for you and maybe make foods a lot of people thing gross(spinach, brocolli, brussel sprouts) taste good(fyi I love veggies but just saying)
However I wouldn’t try them, I have a feeling they would be a tool to enable my E.D. and that’s not cool, I think that could happen with a lot of people too “Oh I’m not hungry, I’ve been using this crystals and they totally make me feel full…” ich bad idea
Would I sprinkle them on my food NOW? No. I’m eating real food now, and I’ve also given up such things as Splenda and aspartame.
Would I have sprinkled them on my food five years ago, in the grip of my eating disorder? Hell yeah. In fact, this doesn’t sound like anything new; I found plenty of similar calorie-free or very low calorie fake flavour decorations when I looked hard enough — Da Vinci sugar-free syrups, the aforementioned flavour sprays, butter-flavoured powder, some kind of wacky “chocolate sauce,” consisting mostly of fat-free cocoa, Splenda and xanthan gum…
I used them obsessively, and enjoyed them at the time, but in retrospect, indeed, the taste was fake and revolting. However, you must remember that for a person in the throes of severe deprivation, even objectively “revolting” sensory stimulation is something.
I wonder if this is what True Lime and True Lemon is. If that’s the case. I’d totally use them. I’d especially use them on veggies . . . sprinkle a little cheddar on the brocolli . . . nice variation to incorporate once in a while. I think that’d be the key . . . once in a while.
This is definately interesting. And like musajen, I would be interested in trying them once in a while just for added flavour to my food. But I wouldn’t use them to help lose weight. I don’t think tricking my body into thinking it’s full and satisfied when it’s actually not would be good for my health.
If you look at the fact that most diet food tastes awful, and even normal weight women think they are fat enough to need to eat “good” foods, it may make some sense that, if the olfactory and taste sensations were necessary to chemically induce satiety, this might work. I’m thin, and I have a thin body type, but I also don’t eat as much as “they” say I should, and I eat highly flavored food. All my flavors are natural though, butter, fat, salt, sugar (real, not artificial), spices, that kind of thing. Of course, I also have no ingrained fear of it being “my last chance” to have any food, for the same reason, so I don’t even overeat at holidays.
I tend to think more of our eating habits have to do with culturally ingrained habits than instinct at this point, but it would be nice if they decided that being able to taste your food didn’t automatically make it bad for you.
I can see how these would work. Recently I’ve put more effort into enjoying food rather than just eating it (if that makes sense) and I eat less and feel fuller than I used to on that amount. Why? I think it is due to the fact that I go for well flavoured foods and really try to appreciate them. Sure, a chemically sweet chocolate thing tastes nice, but over all it is not -as good- as some quality pieces of fruit.
A more intense flavour means I eat less of it.
I’m a bit sceptical of the extra flavor = eat less theory, at least as it applies to me: I remember when I was little, my mom giving me a taste of some dessert, and saying “oh, you won’t want to eat a lot of that, it’s too rich.” That never worked for me – I can eat just as much volume of a very rich brownie as of a less flavorful one and it doesn’t seem to change my desire to do so. I don’t wonder if some of it, for some people, is mental “oh, I shouldn’t eat more of that, it’s so rich!” So I already know for me it wouldn’t do a damn thing to my waistline.
I have been trying to stay away from nonfood substances myself, but I do enjoy them sometimes, and so I might try them if they came out – as a clever way to add surprising flavor to a dish.
I do know what you mean, I grew up as something of a bottomless pit, but it is something I observe from the way I eat now as opposed to a year ago. I don’t eat cakes, buns and chocolate on a regular basis but if I do have them I prefer smaller portions of the more decadent versions that aren’t pumped up with chemicals – the difference between a slice of really well made cheesecake with great ingredients and the 2.50 sara lee chocolate gateux is huge.
Or my brain and eating habits could just be totally topsy turvy ;)
Firstly: EEWWW! That sounds repulsive, if I want to sprinkle extra flavor on my food, I use spices.
Secondly: This reminds me way too much of Famine from “Good Omens” If you haven’t read it, in modern times he wrote diet books and created a line of nutrition free food, that you could eat all that you wanted, and loose weight, then your hair…then your life…
“I have been trying to stay away from non-food substances myself.”
mccn, that really says it all, doesn’t it? How strange that we have become accustomed to the idea of eating “non-food substances.”
This just seems like another magic pill to me – instead of looking at what we are eating, how much and how it makes us feel, we want to sprinkle fairy dust on our food so we can lose weight automatically, without having to expend any energy or thought. Lose weight while you sleep, that sort of thing.
Someone like me, with my already distant relationship to my body, doesn’t need another excuse not to pay attention to what I eat and figure out what works for me.
This is interesting and I wonder if it’s related to something I heard from my oncologist. I’ve just been diagnosed with breast cancer and the chemo regimen they have me on has the potential side effect of affecting my sense of taste and smell – oddly enough, this is one of the few regimens on which people regularly gain weight. They say their anti-nausea protocol works pretty well, so I wonder if patients are eating more to try to make up for the fact that they’re tasting less. Of course, it also could be eating for comfort during a stressful time combined with decreased activity level.
Hm. Mind you, I lost some weight when I cut out most of the HFCS from my diet and started eating more spicy food (Well, more spicy for me. Eating curry period is adventurous for the tastes of a Midwestern gal.) and more Real Food.
But I have discovered that I am more comfortable eating a moderate portion. It’s not that I -can’t- eat all I want, but I’ve learned that I don’t like to eat until it feels like I’m going to hurl if I bend over and I can’t do anything for an hour afterwards. Now, I do want to pack flavor into what I am going to eat, but I want it to be real.
Yeah, you have to be worried about those chemicals. I can’t eat or drink anything with Aspartame in it, it makes me feel funny. I imagine I’d probably get something like that from those crystals, or who knows, maybe I’d get a nice buzz.*
*Joking about the buzz. Heh, drug humor.
I can’t find any ingredients on the trysensa.com website. I did, however, find this howler:
“Researchers weighed participants at the beginning of the study, then again at the end of the study. The results, illustrated on the following chart, were nothing short of amazing. Those who stuck with the Sensa program lost an average of 30.5 pounds!
Equally impressive was Sensa’s effect on Body Mass Index, a measure of body fat. 94% of participants on the Sensa program went down an entire BMI category, meaning Sensa not only helps you lose weight — it also helps you lose fat!”
It looks like the study hasn’t been peer-reviewed yet, let alone published – it’s just scheduled to be released at a conference at some point. Medline gets no hits on a search for Hirsch + tastant. So yet again, the media is all over commercial “science” with no checks or balances whatsoever.
Maybe it’s me, but little crystaly sprinkly things sound like something I thought they would have in the way future ala Jetsons style. Right next to the pills you put in your microwave and they turn into a chicken. Either way, I would still never use them. You have no idea what weird chemical is in them. I was told to try artificial sweetners because they were “so awesome!” and the aspartame in them just made my already bad migraine condition like 5 bajillion times worse. I stick to real food. No weird diet food that has inky chemicals in it.
Just because the participants were asked to keep the same eating habits doesn’t mean they did. Just the knowledge that they were in a study involving food might have subconsciously made them eat differently, especially if they had to keep track or write down what they ate (I didn’t read the study, so I don’t know if that’s the case).
Also, as someone else said, the crystals could taste like ass. But I’d probably try them, as long as they didn’t cause anal leakage or something (hellooooo, Olestra!).
I honestly don’t know – it would depend on what they were.
I am not very discerning about food, I have to say. I think most things are delicious anyway – including things like plain pasta or oatmeal that some people would find incredibly bland. So I’m not sure that making food taste either better or worse would have that great an effect on my appetite.
I have other ways of regulating it (such as to eat at regular times, and to eat slowly so that I have a chance to notice when I’m full). But if I’m hungry, I’ll honestly eat whatever is available, even if it doesn’t taste that great.
I think the having no sense of smell taste and being overweight fact is wrong. I haven’t looked up any studies about it myself, but I have a coworker who was born with out a sense of smell, and he was chronically underweight. Basically he didn’t enjoy eating food at all, food textures bothered him a lot and he kind of forced himself to eat most of the time. Since he had done some research on this topic he said is was quite common for people with out a sense of smell to be underweight. Maybe it’s different for people born with out it and people who lose their sense of smell though.
actually, my daughter works for a trial clinic dr and it DOES work! sorry doubters,
I know two anosmic people. One’s fairly normal weight, rather stocky and muscular but he spends a lot of time at the gym. He enjoys food just fine — he just tends to go for strongly flavoured and textured food. (Loves chewy veggies, crunchy fruit, and pasta with mostly-raw garlic; hates tofu, refried beans, and hot cereal.) The other, who I suspect is more severely anosmic, is very skinny and has very poor personal hygiene, and basically only likes food for social reasons or if it has sugar in it.
The really interesting thing, though, is that both are pretty much completely asexual.
I’ve long thought the world needs to figure out a way to create a way for people to enjoy food without it actually entering our bodies, just our mouths. ‘Cause isn’t that usually the way it is? We want the taste of the good things, even when our tummies are full. Maybe the crystals could fill that role? Unfortunately, though, I’m guessing something like that would lead to increased disordered eating.
I lost both smell and taste due to sinus infection 3 years ago and it’s not fun and did gain weight. I am always trying to taste something. After much research of my own I decided we really eat from memory. We remember what things smell like and what
food tastes like so we go for our favorites and almost trick ourselves into believing we can taste them. I totally get the brain connection so I am really anxious to try these crystals to see if they trigger the I’m full feeling.