Preloading and it’s effect on appetite

I was cleaning out my old files yesterday, and I found this segment that I saved a while back. It’s from Obesity Research. 2004; 12: 102S-106S. The title of the article is  Biology of Eating Behavior in Obesity, by Gary J. Schwartz’s:

Dr. Roth. If I understood you correctly, a lipid load in the duodenum reduces subsequent meal size.
Dr. Schwartz. Correct.
Dr. Roth. So, I don’t mean to be flippant, but it strikes me that if you started every meal with a shrimp tail and a handful of macadamia nuts, perfect Atkins strategy, and waited 20 minutes to load your duodenum, you would reduce subsequent meal size and enhance the efficacy of the diet. These are Atkins maneuvers that would be perfectly reasonable, and now you make a scientific rationale for reducing subsequent meal size.
Dr. Schwartz. In rodents, protein and fat infusions in the duodenum are much more efficacious in reducing subsequent food intake than equally caloric loads of carbohydrate. They are also particularly good secretogogues of CCK. So mechanistically speaking, it’s not unreasonable to imagine that preconsumption, if you will, increases the availability of nutrient secretogogues of the satiety peptides that are mechanistically important in regulating the subsequent meal size.
Dr. Feinman. Do carbohydrates, more particularly sucrose, have an effect? In particular, would vagal stimulation be repressed by the presence of sucrose?
Dr. Schwartz. An individual macronutrient may have different behavioral and neural effects at different gut– brain sites. At an oral site, it has been shown that sucrose can promote the release of dopamine in the forebrain nucleus acumens, part of the neuranatomic basis of reward. Duodenal infusions of carbohydrate solutions can promote increases in vagal afferent activity, yet these infusions also reduce subsequent meal size.”

You got to admit, that’s pretty good stuff. How do you apply this bit of knowledge if you have a tendency to overeat?

One can eat a small handful of mixed nuts (e.g., 10 grams of almonds & walnuts) prior to a main meal take the edge off. I suggest drinking cup of plain hot tea with it. Then wait for 10 – 15 minutes, after which one can proceed with the rest of the meal. The calories would be minimal — about 60 calories, but it would definitely help manage one’s hunger after a long day at the office.