Sensory Specific Satiety

How It Can Help You Lose Weight

As you saw in When To Stop Eating, sensory specific satiety is the scientific term for something you experience everyday: Getting less pleasure out of each bite of food.

Sensory specific satiety explains why the first slice of pizza tastes amazing, but the third? Not so much. In this article we're going to do a deep dive on sensory specific satiety because it is a critical tool for weight loss.

Here's an interesting angle on the phenomenon: If you just had a plate of pasta and you were offered either more pasta or some cake after you’ve expressed being done with the pasta, you’re likely to choose to eat the cake.

The More You Eat The Less You Like

If you eat the cake first, you’ll probably choose the pasta when presented with both. This is sensory-specific satiety. It means that you get less pleasure from a specific food after you eat it, and you’re more likely to reach for other foods if they’re available, perceiving them as more pleasurable than the food you already had. This means that the variety of flavors in your diet can influence your food intake.

A review of the literature found 39 human and animal studies that evaluate the link between dietary variety, energy intake and body weight. The review found that the more variety in a meal or a diet, the greater the food intake and the more likely it is for an individual to put on weight.

Additionally, it showed that after a food is eaten, the reported appetite for it, preference and intake change. The review authors conclude that these effects are most likely due to oral habituation inducing sensory-specific satiety [1].

In other words, when you get exposed to a particular food for a while, you get used to its taste and you stop wanting it. If you’re presented with a variety of foods in your diet, you’re going to eat more and if you’re not careful, you can gain more weight on the long run.

In a clinical trial, 40 males were randomized into 1 of 4 groups and were given oatmeal with different flavors for breakfast: plain for the control group, a low-intensity vanilla aroma, a high-intensity vanilla aroma, and sweeteners.

The researchers found that the groups that had a high-intensity vanilla aroma and the sweeteners ate less food throughout the day, had less sweet snacks and more non-sweet snacks than the other groups [2].

Even Rats Have Sensory Specific Satiety

All the groups had the same oatmeal for breakfast, but the added flavor influenced their food intake and preferences throughout the day. Showing that the effect is due to none other than sensory habituation.

Another study was carried out on a group of rats to demonstrate the effect of sensory-specific satiety using 2 experiments. In the first experiment, they gave the rats two differently flavored solutions and tested which one they would consume after drinking a large amount of one of them.

They found that the rats consumed a larger amount of the solution they weren’t exposed to compared to the solution they previously had. In the second experiment, the researchers wanted to determine if repeated exposure to two solutions that had similar flavors will generalize the sensory-specific satiety to both of them since it could be difficult to distinguish between them.

The rats that were exposed to the flavored solutions one at a time got used to the solutions and consumed less of both, but the group that had access to the solutions in rapid alternation learned to distinguish between the solutions, so they demonstrated a sensory-specific satiety to only one solution [3].

This study proves the existence of sensory-specific satiety as well as the possibility of generalization if two foods are close in taste, as the brain perceives them as the same experience.

In order to determine if sensory-specific satiety depends on whether or not the uneaten food is believed to be available for consumption, a study was conducted in 3 separate experiments in a university.

There Is More Pleasure In Smaller Portions

In the first experiment, 60 female staff and students were given bite-sized portions of a food and were asked to rate it. After that they had as much of that food as they wanted. One group was told that they’ll have access to the food whenever they wanted. The other group was told that they won’t have access to the food for the rest of the study. Then they were asked to rate it again.

The researchers found that both groups rated the food as less pleasant after they finished eating compared to when they had the bite-sized portions. There was only a slight difference between the two groups, failing to prove that sensory-specific satiety depends on food availability.

The second and third experiments were conducted with different methods and participants than the first but yielded the same results [4]. Participants reported that the food was less pleasant after they had it, and the concept of availability did not significantly influence their rating. This shows that sensory-specific satiety effect is caused by the sensory experience of eating, and probably not affected by food availability.

These studies, together, demonstrate the effect of sensory-specific satiety on choice, pleasantness, and food intake. It’s induced by oral habituation to the sensory experiences we get from eating. Knowing that a high variety of food flavors and experiences can increase food consumption, and that habituation can reduce it, it may be useful to explore its implications in the context of weight loss [5]. For example, limiting every meal to one type of food rather than different dishes served at once. Being aware of this effect can help us make better food choices.

References:

Wilkinson, L. L., & Brunstrom, J. M. (2016). Sensory specific satiety: More than 'just' habituation?. Appetite, 103, 221–228. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appet.2016.04.019

Quote: Broadly, they support an explanation of SSS based on habituation or stimulus specificity rather than top-down influences based on the availability of uneaten foods.

Raynor, H. A., & Epstein, L. H. (2001). Dietary variety, energy regulation, and obesity. Psychological Bulletin, 127(3), 325–341. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.127.3.325

Quote: Animal and human studies show that food consumption increases when there is more variety in a meal or diet and that greater dietary variety is associated with increased body weight and fat. A hypothesized mechanism for these findings is sensory-specific satiety

González, A., Recio, S. A., Sánchez, J., Gil, M., & de Brugada, I. (2018). Effect of exposure to similar flavours in sensory specific satiety: Implications for eating behaviour. Appetite, 127, 289–295. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appet.2018.05.015

Quote: The results suggest that easy and continuous access to a high variety of similar unhealthy foods might have long-term effects on food consumption, and highlight a potential mechanism linking obesogenic environments with dietary habits.

Sashie Abeywickrema, Indrawati Oey, & Mei Peng, (2022), Sensory specific satiety or appetite? Investigating effects of retronasally-introduced aroma and taste cues on subsequent real-life snack intake, Food Quality and Preference, Volume 100. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodqual.2022.104612

Quote: Our findings reveal that exposure to retronasally introduced vanilla aroma, and the sweet taste can induce daylong sensory-specific effects. Specifically, pre-exposure to sweet-associated aroma (i.e., vanillin) and taste (i.e., sucralose) stimuli decrease sensory-congruent (i.e., sweet), but increase sensory-incongruent (i.e., non-sweet) snack intake throughout the day. Overall, the study suggests that sensory exposure may have lasting temporal effects on eating behaviour

Abeywickrema, Sashie & Oey, Indrawati & Peng, Mei. (2022). Sensory specific satiety or appetite? Investigating effects of retronasally-introduced aroma and taste cues on subsequent real-life snack intake. Food Quality and Preference. 100. 104612. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodqual.2022.104612

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