If you eat 100 calories of spinach why would that make you feel more full than 100 calories of a fried food? You would eat more spinach vs fried food but if both have the same caloric intake why does your body not make you feel the same “amount of full” for both?
In: Biology
because you’re going to be eating more spinach than fried food?
Your body has two mechanisms for deciding when it’s full: one is physical, the stomach knows when it is being stretched; the other is chemical, the body knows when it needs more nutrients.
In general, yes, as 100 calories takes up more space than 100 calories of fried food, you’d be more likely to feel full after the spinach than after the fried food due the difference between how stretched your stomach perceives itself to be. However, if your body was lacking in a nutrient that spinach does not have, you might still have the urge to eat more because of the chemical drive.
Your body can’t immediately tell how many calories there are in what you ate. If a bunch of stuff comes into your stomach it sends a signal to your brain which then goes “ooh hoo that’s a bunch of food time to stop eating”
The amount of fibers.
High fiber foods takes more place in the stomach and takes more time to digested. That’s why you generally feel more full eating veggies vs french fries. Veggies are for the most part very rich in fibers, same as fruit.
Feeling of being full depends on how much you eat in size, making your stomach muscles stretch, not on calories. Our body calculates calories after processing everything, which is time consuming.
This is like that question- which is heavier, a pound of feathers or a pound of lead? Obviously, they weigh the same. The feathers take up a lot more space, but the weight the same.
Our body senses fullness based on how much is in our stomach. It just cares about how stretched out or shriveled up the walls of our stomach are. Calories have nothing to do with this. They’re just a measure of how much energy your body will get from the food. So if you have a bowl full of spinach, it takes up more space in your stomach then a small serving of junk food with the same number of calories.
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