You are right, I "didn’t know that prime rib is less calorically dense than rice cakes." Very interesting- thanks!

Awesome. Thanks for giving some very clear ideas about what to do to help reduce hunger. I agree it is far more than stomach fullness. I drink tea with cream most days until noon or 2pm and break my fast then. I have a fairly empty stomach, and I feel it, but I am not hungry til early afternoon. Paleo wins on the satiety front. I totally agree on eating when you are rushed or in the middle of something else leading to overeating. If I eat while doing other things the food is gone before I realize it, and I am sure I am shoveling it in. That must definitely be part of the French paradox.

I had a friend selling a diet drink recently that was basically flavored metamucil. I have had far more success with dropping and maintaining weight than them - fiber is definitely not the cure-all it is marketed as!

Thanks for the article - it was very informative and will help remind me to eat slowly and reflectively.

Brilliant article as always, and one to be savored slowly for its many implications.

I've noticed whey protein often fails to satiate, supporting the common advice to "chew your calories". But now I wonder if sipping whey protein over, say, 15 minutes, might not be just as effective as masticating beef. Time for a self-experiment -- if I can stand it.

Another thought is that wolfing down one's food on the hoof or within time constraints promotes elevated cortisol, and we all know how that catalyzes fat storage. Extended, relaxed dining could be expected to minimize cortisol as well as allowing satiety to kick in.

Finally, I wonder if there is an enzymatic angle to all of this. Ingestion is not absorption; the latter requires amylase, protease, lipase, and all that good stuff, which the body can only secrete at a certain rate. Stuff yourself faster than your enzyme release rate and you can be sure of indigestion and all that entails. I know because I've done it way too many times.

Thanks again, JS, for distilling the research into a unified theory.

Great article and much more convincing then SG's musings about reward/palatability/bland vs. none bland etc.
But one thing: There are some traditional foods from fat and carbs which are indeed satiating, like ukranian Salo (salted fatback). If you have salo, rye bread and - vodka 😉 you don't need anything else that night. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salo_(food)
And I remember my home made potatoe chips, sauted in a mix of coconut and butter oil were filling and satiating as well.
I think what I want to say is that SAFA is much more satiating (even without protein) then PUFA.
And we all know which one is in those snacks and packed french fries...

Quite, quite superb.

Your research has been so extensive.

I was not aware of studies regarding an involuntary homeostasis - the existence of a negative feedback - on intraday ingestion of the the major macronutrients. Thank you for the information.

In Winter-time I adore stews, thick soups and so on, and find both satisfying and satiating. There is an abundance of added water in these meals. I have never found much explanatory power in the notion of "calorie density".

Slainte mhaith.

One of the great things about a paleo diet:

Low calorie density (by weight) with high nutrient density (by calorie).

Good read.

You noted that "tricking" satiation won't really help you if you're not eating as much as you actually need, since you'd just be hungry a little bit later.

I wonder about the opposite effect. If you eat more than you need, but eat well, and store it up, as long as you're able to access that storage you shouldn't be hungry for a longer time.

So as long as you're able to consume that and you don't eat again before you're actually hungry, it shouldn't be so much of a problem. I guess there might be some nutrient that doesn't translate as well or you can't easily keep so there's still a net excess, although the time interval wouldn't be that big.

But still, I feel being able to functionally burn stored calories is at least as important as matching satiation and satiety, not that the discussion about it isn't very relevant, specially when you're trying to explain why obesity occurs and "grows".

Something else that came to my mind as I read is how used to cooking and adapted to it we are. I think it's still a bit open just how long ago people started to cook, but it should be at least close to a couple hundred thousand years and (pure guess here, but I think it makes sense) maybe much more, so it probably had at least some effect on us.

Oh, about fat, usually when I'm having meat I eat all the fat I can. When I have plenty, maybe in an all you can eat or a barbecue, as I start to "fill up" fat gets less attractive much faster than meat otherwise. It gets to a point in which I can easily have more steak but just thinking about eating that big piece of fat makes me uneasy.

I'm not sure how that works for other people but it seems to me even if a certain food has more calories per gram than another one, even after accounting for water intake or chewing time, such food might still not take as much longer as one might predict to get you to satiation, through other mechanisms.