Satiety. No way to slim

This short overview considers a prospect that claims to boost satiety are used to prescribe or sell materials to dieters that do not slow their daily rate of energy intake, thereby worsening their problems with body weight and even perhaps increasing the prevalence of obesity. Implying that a drug or a food contributes to weight control by providing extra satiety is a mistake in two ways. First, the notion of a hormone analogue or a food constituent having a specifiable satiating power is scientifically incoherent. Secondly, a slimming satiety is a particular pattern of eating and drinking, in which substances have no fixed roles. Such a dietary custom has to be shown to produce a larger step decrease in weight with the medication or food product than without it. Suppression of food intake at a usual time for eating does not imply reduction in the eater's total intake of energy in a calendar period and hence lower weight while the material is still used within that eating pattern. It is the maintained pattern of behaviour that slims and prevents regain, not a satiety-augmenting substance. Regulators should not allow incomprehension of the basic science of energy balance to be exploited by advocacy of a food or medication for satiety believed by consumers to be a means of avoiding unhealthy fatness. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.