bland food

hey,

just wondering, if you eat bland food does it make you hungrier??

i have a feeling the more bland the food the more you want, is this true?

 

thanks

I don't know that it makes you hungrier but I know that if I eat something tasteless, I don't feel like I've eaten anything.  I suspect 'flavour' has a lot to do with 'satisfaction'.  

I'm with Gi-jane, I try to make my food more interesting with different flaourings etc so that I know that I've eaten something really nice.  It also helps me feel that I haven't wasted calories and therefore feel that I can stick this out long term.

Bland food doens't satisfy your tastebuds, and taste is a big part of satiation... so you'll eat more of it trying toget that 'satisfied tummy' feeling.

I've read that eating bland foods (and many of the same foods day after day) doesn't stimulate you to be as hungry as you otherwise might be, and that eating a large variety of foods with lots of spices and taste will make you hungrier in general.

However, my experience has been the opposite: I find that bland foods don't satisfy me, but that a little bit of well-spiced food with lots of variety is VERY satisfying.

I don't know if bland makes you hungrier or just less satisfied. 

I will say that when I have a bad cold and lose my sense of taste/smell, I have very little interest in eating - obviously for me, taste is a big part of why I eat

Well, what are bland foods, anyways?

Foods that taste bland? Foods that look bland? I doubt it's any of those. The "bland" term is pretty subjective so I'm going to assume you mean foods that are simple/mostly refined. In which case, yes and no.

See, refined foods usually have ingredients in them that cause the enzymes in your stomach to break down the food a lot faster. It's mostly processed foods, mostly brand wheat products. White bread is probably the worse offender. Why? Well, it's made with enriched flour - Usually bleached.

See, they bleach the flour in order to get rid of any sort of unwanted substances found in the flour without having to resort to ageing it for long periods of time because they find it to be too costly. So they bleach the flour in chemicals to mimic this process. 

After the bleaching is done, they have to enrich the flour in order to restore some of the vitamins and minerals. The bad part about this is that the flour has gone through some heavy processing and once the bread is bleached and enriched, it has lost most of it's nutritional value making it a loaf of highly refined carbs.

Some people like to compare refined carbs to simple sugars. I wouldn't go as far as to say it's bad for you, but it really isn't too good for you either. That being said, it really depends how much you eat of it. For me, I've been eating about 4-6 slices of bread of ALL types of bread for my whole life. I checked the igredients a while ago and It seems to be all refined.

I'm 6'1, 155 lbs - I've lost about 40 pounds over the summer on a diet of mostly manafactured bread and salads. Doesn't really seem to be doing me too much harm. Or atleast I haven't noticed any.

But I digress.

In the end, it comes down to how fast food breaks down in your stomach and how the energy is spread through out your body. I'm pretty sure the Glycemix Index shows you how fast or slow carbs break down in your blood. (Google it)

You usually have to aim of a low glycemix index.

A key factor, however, really depends on how much you eat and your own willpower. If you're consuming the right amount of energy then it really shouldn't be a problem to keep your meals balanced. Don't deprive yourself of refined foods such as white bread, either. The problem is in the over-consumption of the food, not the food itself.