When we were kids, my parents used to forbid us from eating anything sweet, inside a certain period of time before sitting down for dinner. They would tell us, “Unh-Uh, Mister! You’d better not eat that Jaw Breaker right now. It’ll spoil your appetite! And you won’t want any dinner!”
Or like how when my brother would always beg to have his favorite dessert —Apple Pie With A Slice Of Cracker Barrel Cheddar Cheese On Top — as his main course, before eating his meat and spinach like the rest of us had to. And pops would go, “What’s the matter with you, boy! Are you trying to spoil your appetite?”
The concept of “spoiling your appetite” by eating candy, cookies, chewing gum, or anything sweet — might be only an American thing. But I’m convinced that the sweetness of all of these meal replacement drinks, have a significant contribution to inducing the perception of satiety — in the brain.
Of course, it’s not only the sweetness that makes our brains perceive that our stomachs are full. The presence of fat and fiber in the system, contribute to that perception too.
Those crafty food scientists and nutritionist boffins can engineer the sugar, fat and salt in foods in the precise combinations to make you never feel sated — and to always crave the food and uncontrollably eat more and more of it. That’s how your junk foods work — in a nutshell.
Then logically they can also flip that, and engineer the sugar, fat and fiber contents of foods — and food-like powders — to the precise proportions that spoil your appetite.
Yup! They’ve got the concepts behind my parent’s pre-mealtime admonishings, down to a science!
Now. Some people are more susceptible to those effects — cravings on one hand or spoiled appetite on the other. Some less so.