A client of mine sent me this link to an article describing a study on how protein keeps hunger at bay. In a nutshell, The researchers gave 16 people three different beverages, each with varying levels of carbohydrates, fats, and proteins. They took blood samples before the first beverage, then every 20 minutes for six hours afterward, measuring ghrelin (a hormone which regulates hunger) levels in each sample.
Results concluded that proteins were the best suppressor of ghrelin and kept subjects more sated. Conversely, carbohydrates initially suppressed ghrelin, but levels rebounded quite quickly and more than doubled not long afterwards. According to the guys with the white coats, carbohydrates eventually made people even hungrier than before they had eaten. Which is exactly why I hate those 100 calorie snack packs I blogged about last week. More often than not, people will end up eating more later on in the day.
Frankly all of this is nothing new. It’s great to see this information finally getting some attention in mainstream media, but it’s information that many fitness professionals, such as myself, have been advocating for years; mainly that people need to learn to stress more protein in their everyday diet.
That’s not to say I’m a huge fan of the Atkins or South Beach Diet (both of which stress protein), but it does go along with what I like to tell my clients when they’re not sure of what they should be eating at “x” time: “when in doubt, eat protein.”
Nonetheless, I’m kinda miffed that my tax dollars are funding these kind of studies. Why don’t these scientist spend more time studying something useful? Like whether or not Kim Kardashian’s derriere actually has it’s own gravitational pull. A gravitational pull of awesomeness!
