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It’s an all too familiar feeling at gatherings to stuff your face and still have enough room for a yummy dessert.
It’s not just greed, it’s the way our bodies are hardwired, reports Daily Mail.
“Dessert stomach” has been scientifically proven to exist and is better known as sensory-specific satiety.
Simply put, the more you eat of something, the less you like it, which results in a feeling of fullness. But you’re only sated or filled with that particular taste, texture or flavour.
“I’ve just had enough of that food, I want something else, is really what sensory-specific satiety is,” Barbara Rolls told Vox.
Rolls, the director of Penn State University’s Laboratory for the Study of Human Ingestive Behaviour, has been studying the phenomenon since the 1980s.
Sensory-specific satiety has evolved to keep us healthy by limiting our appetite for one food and encouraging us to switch to another, Rolls says.
We’re omnivores and need to eat a variety of foods and experiencing a decline in how much we like the food we’re currently eating while still desiring other foods encourages variety, Rolls adds.
“It can backfire though, of course, because we’re presented with a variety of food and it encourages us to keep eating beyond satiety,” the expert warns.
Researchers from the Lovisenberg Diakonale Hospital in Norway back this theory, reports Women’s Health.
They claim the sugar in sweet foods stimulates a reflex that expands the stomach, leading us to eat more than we should.
Source: Daily Mail, Vox, Women’s Health
