Will smaller pieces of food increase satiety?

We feel full faster, and eat less later, when our food is served in small pieces. It works in both college students and lab rats, according to a study by Devina Wadhera and colleagues at Arizona State University.

"Cutting up energy-dense foods into smaller pieces may be beneficial to dieters who wish to make their meal more satiating while also maintaining portion control," Wadhera says in a news release.

Wadhera's team split 301 male and female students into two groups. One was offered a whole bagel covered with cream cheese. The other group was offered the same kind of bagel, cut into four pieces and covered with the same amount of cream cheese.

The group that got the whole bagel ate a little more of it than those who got the cut-up bagel. But the real difference came 20 minutes later, when all of the students were offered a free meal. Those who'd eaten the cut-up bagel, even though they'd eaten a little less, ate less of the free meal. "Perhaps cutting up foods into multiple, bite-sized pieces may perceptually look like more and therefore elicit greater satiation than a single-piece food portion," Wadhera and colleagues suggest.

The study was presented at the annual meeting of the Society for the Study of Ingestive Behavior, held in Zurich, Switzerland. These findings were presented at a medical conference. They should be considered preliminary as they have not yet undergone the "peer review" process, in which outside experts scrutinize the data prior to publication in a medical journal.

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