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Comment by y4mi | Hacker News Reader

No, butter makes the other stuff more delicious, making you eat just a little more each time.

I think this is important, and that the food industry has been progressively making food more and more yummy over the past few decades. So far I really don't have a good answer for how to reduce consumption without reducing pleasure, at least in the short term. Developing a taste for food that isn't designed to be addictive, probably requires a long term change of habits.

>So far I really don't have a good answer for how to reduce consumption without reducing pleasure

Salt.

Good one, with that comes increased water intake due to increased thirst, therefore quicker satiation due to being full quicker.

Restaurants like salt because customers won't order water (even though tap water is free here in NL it makes one look as too much of a cheapskate); they'll order a drink like wine which they can upsell and already has large profit margins.

Nephrologists won't be happy though (although it does generate them more customers, they probably got more than enough as it is).

My suggestion would be: less salt + umami + herbs.

Herbs is a bit vague, it really depends on the dish (and there's more than herbs; look at things like garlic, ginger, and turmeric you can buy these dried as well, in same tins or glasses as herbs are).

Personally, I'm a fan of the Italian spices as well as mixes like baharat and ras el hanout even though I don't have a background in any related culture (I'm Dutch).

You can achieve umami in various ways: yeast extract, Vetsin, E621, MSG, etc. In the end its all the same, but I put the one consumers fear the least first in the list wink

The reason why our satiety mechanisms don't work is because carbs upregulate insulin, which supresses leptin [1]. Leptin and ghrelin are the two main hunger hormones; leptin tells our brain we're full. The signal doesn't work too well in the presence of high insulin, and gets worse with insulin resistance, causing people to have a "second stomach" for sweet foods.

https://olumialife.com/knowledge/how-does-insulin-affect-lep...

I find a great substitute is olive oil where I'd use butter for non-cooking (eg. instead of butter on pasta or instead of butter on bread). It's not quite as tasty but still a huge improvement over dry, and it's healthier.

For cooking, I understand olive oil is unhealthy (I think you create carcinogens as a side-effect), as are many other oils, but that coconut oil doesn't do this because of its different melting temperature.

Ah, but coconut oil has other potential issues. I would not put it in the healthy category, despite its current popularity.

> For cooking, I understand olive oil is unhealthy (I think you create carcinogens as a side-effect), as are many other oils, but that coconut oil doesn't do this because of its different melting temperature.

I believe the situation with oil is a bit more complicated than that, and you're generally fine with olive oil unless you make it smoke, which is fairly non-trivial to do, despite its low smoking point. There seems to be some debate on the topic: http://www.seriouseats.com/2015/03/cooking-with-olive-oil-fa...

Coconut oil in particular actually has a low smoking point. If you want to be safe, you want Avocado oil.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoke_point

I encourage you to try some top-shelf olive oil, if you haven't already -- I find that it blows butter out of the water in most cases.

I initially felt the same way as you wrt tastiness, but had a friend bring me back a tin of oil from Italy recently and whoooo boy it's just the most phenomenal thing. Add a bit of salt & pepper to a shallow bowl of oil for dipping bread.

Coconut oil is a (mostly) saturated fat; olive oil and sunflower seed oil are (mostly) unsaturated fat.

Olive oil with herbs is amazing. Give it a whirl.

I don't know why @gras's comment in this thread is marked as dead, but I agree with them.

Reposting the question from the comment:

> Doesn't fat make food more satisfying, making you feel fulfilled sooner?

You can click the comment permalink (the age indicator) and on that page you have the option to vouch for the person /comment if it seems appropriate. I did so and they appear to be visible again. I've seen it take two vouch operations before though.

Ah, the vouch option seems to only be available on the comment permalink, and not on the general comments page. TIL, thanks!

Doesn't fat make food more satisfying, making you feel fulfilled sooner?

Needs a citation I guess.

https://www.ncbi.nqlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10435117

For most people high fiber foods are better.

It is a study of 14 people that self reported how hungry they were and how much they ate on their own. I don't think we can get to advice stating "most people" should do anything from that. It is an example of how bad science gets translated to bad advice and bad behavior. Not picking on you, you are responding rationally to a headline or blurb about the study. But it is a worthless study.

There are more studies. That was an example. Go look around for the others. Most importantly try it for yourself. It is pretty easy to figure out.

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