Science says smoothies and soup actually fill you up for longer
It looks like smoothies are even better than we already thought. According to science, smoothies and soup keep you fuller for longer than if you ate the ingredients separately.
This is great news for lovers of both smoothies and blenders. While you might not like the idea of mixing a plate of chicken, mushrooms, and green beans together, it’s actually better for you. Well, it’s not better, but it does keep you fuller way longer.
We are used to eating meals piece by piece, but according to a new study, mixing your meals is a much better idea.
Thanks to hunger expert Robin Spiller, the director of biomedical research at Nottingham Digestive Diseases Centre in England, blended foods are better foods. In a study done by Spiller and his team, they found that when people drank a blended meal or “soup,” it kept them from feeling hungry for about an hour longer than a normal meal.
Interesting, don’t you think?
“All other things being equal, if you took a meal and blended it, you’re likely to feel fuller longer,” Spiller told The Atlantic.
He explained that your body initially uses the size of your stomach to help you determine how full you feel. Eventually, however, it figures out what you are eating, and if it had nourishment or not. Aka, it decides if you are still hungry, or how quickly you’ll become hungry again.
"That's why if you drank several glasses of water, you feel full, but only for about ten minutes," he explained. "Whereas if you took the same volume of soup you'd feel full for a couple of hours."
While drinking soups and smoothies will reportedly keep you full for a longer amount of time, it does shorten the digestive process. According to Spiller and one of his other studies, chewing foods does help with digestion, so drinking everything isn’t exactly the perfect solution.
“It may make a difference [to how you digest food], and the amount of time you spend over your meal may also make a difference. The one things about a smoothie is that it’s much quicker to eat a lot of calories than it is when you eat whole fruit,” he said. Translation: you can end up eating too much when you have smoothies, because of how quickly the eating experience is over.
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That being said, if you do want to feel fuller, longer, you can blend foods without losing any fiber benefits.
"Fiber is what's responsible for the viscosity of a smoothie and its impact on the bacteria of the large bowel," Spiller added. "Mashing fiber up into small pieces should only enhance its availability for the bacteria. Its prebiotic effect is definitely unimpaired — it might be enhanced, even."
The more you know.
