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Article on satiety from:
The Fullness Factor™
Understanding Hunger and Satiety
Hunger - one of your body's strongest and most beneficial stimuli - helps insure
that you consume enough Calories for your needs. However, it also works against
you when you're trying to lose weight. You could easily lose weight just by
eating less, but the less that you eat or the longer you postpone eating, the
hungrier you become, and the longer it takes your hunger to subside once you
do begin to eat. So the hungrier you are, the more likely it is that you'll
overeat, consuming extra Calories that can quickly slow or reverse your weight
loss.
As you know, the only way to end hunger is to eat. Eating provides satiety - a pleasant feeling of fullness and the corresponding reduction of hunger. But did you also know that some foods are better than others for satisfying your hunger? A baked potato, for example, will probably "fill you up" much better than a serving of candy that has the same number of Calories.
Experiments with Satiety
For years, researchers have studied satiety. While many things are known to
influence satiety - including individual differences in endocrine levels from
one person to another - one of the biggest factors is the type of food that
you eat. Some foods fill your stomach faster and/or remain in your stomach longer,
and therefor do a better job of holding off hunger.
One of the most detailed studies that demonstrates this was conducted by Suzanna Holt and her fellow researchers at the University of Sydney. The results of their study, "The Satiety Index of Common Foods", were published in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition, September 1995. In this study, the researchers fed human test subjects fixed-Calorie portions of thirty-eight different foods, and then recorded the subjects' perceived hunger following each feeding.