Scientist who studies the rules of ultra-transformed foods to stop overeating

Sam Dicken is a scientist who seeks potential damage to ultra-transformed food, such as cookies purchased in stores and pizza. Despite what he knows, these types of food are often made to be so easy to eat that even he finds it difficult to control himself around them.

“My appetite is enormous,” said the researcher of the Center for Obesity Research at UCL in London. “I find it really easy to continue eating.”

But Dicken has some smart tips to practice moderation when you eat less nutritious foods, which go beyond the simple fact of trying to decipher the label, whether they are ultra-tail.

The UPFs are made with ingredients that you would not find in ordinary cuisine, such as stabilizers and gums, are very marketed and stable in the set.

Part of what makes them so easy to eat is that this combination can make the upfs hyperpalatable – which means that they contain an appetizing combination of fat, salt or sugar and are of soft texture, said Dicken. All this can mean that they are also rich in energy, containing a large number of calories per gram of food.

Scientists work to discover whether its effects of additives, transformation or nutritional content of the UPFS, which means that a diet rich in them is associated with a multitude of health problems. These include obesity, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular diseases and certain cancers.

The UPF is a vague category, so to keep its appetite under control, Dicken thinks of the following three things when he decides what to eat.

Energy density

Dicken needs to eat a large volume of food to feel satisfied, he said, so something he really looks like is how dense a food is.

The fruits and vegetables are not rich in energy because they contain very few calories per gram, which means that it is happy to eat them in the desire of your heart, while foods like chocolate and sweet drinks are very rich in energy.

“You can have 1,000 calories of strawberries, and it’s a massive battery,” he said. “And 1,000 calories of chocolate in front of me, it’s a small plate.”

“This is what I do if I go to a supermarket, I always have a glance at the energy density. I know it is an important factor for me,” he said.

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Texture

UPFs tend to be low in fiber and therefore Have a soft and easy -to -eat texture, said Dicken. Take cheese puffs for example: you can eat a handle in just a few seconds mince. For this reason, he takes into account the sweetness of a food when he decides what to eat. If he’s hungry, he will opt for something crunchy like a carrot or nuts.

When you have a snack that is really dense with a soft texture, “it is very easy to consume too much,” he said.

It takes about 20 minutes for the stomach to send a brain signal by letting him know that you are full. Slowly chewing and taking more time with each bite means that the body has enough time to treat it for it to be too much, said Dicken.

Follow the recommended food directives

Above all, Dicken tries to ensure that he follows the British national food directives, such as: eating five parts of the fruits and vegetables per day, limiting salt, sugar, saturated fats and red meat and eating a lot of fresh products.

Trying to consume fewer UPF can improve your diet, he said, as it usually involves eating and preparing fastest whole food.

However, if concentrating on UPFS does not bring you closer to national food councils, “I would not do it,” he said.

UPFs are practical, and if an occupied parent relies on the complement of their diet with precious meat or protein powder, for example, which could be considered ultra-transformed, these can simply lead to nutritional gaps in their diet, said Dicken.