Stipetic:

Yes, I eat Greek yogurt reasonably regularly.  I don't have a problem eating it quickly...but I don't want very much of it, either.

I don't take the macronutrient cycling as a primary driver of anything, because the effect is small.  Mainly I'm trying to demonstrate that satiety is relative to our current nutritional state.  That being said, candy and soda will never be satiating, because they contain no nutrients.

Interestingly, now that you mention it, I definitely eat more monotonously now that I'm eating very nutrient-dense food (see: the Paleo Scramble and its variants).  It's back when I was still eating the SAD that I'd get cravings for random foods and go through "phases" of eating lots of one thing, probably because I was cycling between foods that were deficient in one thing or another.  Now I'm happy to eat basically the same things week-to-week.  I hadn't thought about this before, but it definitely supports the theory that satiety is primarily nutrient-driven.

Good to see you here!  I hope you'll stay and keep contributing.

Kit Perkins:

Absolutely.  This is especially important if you're trying to lose weight, because you're eating less food but your body still needs nutrients...so the nutrient density must increase.

As I've said before, the problem isn't that food is rewarding: it's rewarding taste without the nutrition that has accompanied it through evolutionary time.  Our taste buds are not trying to make us fat: they're trying to make us eat right.  Over the millions of years of human and pre-human evolution, anyone whose tastes did not correspond with healthy eating would be outcompeted by those whose tastes drove them to eat the most healthy food possible.

fredt:

Exactly!  That's a great way of thinking about "should I eat this food"...what's the nutrition to calories ratio?  The worst foods (like gluten grains) actually decrease the nutrition of what you eat with them by disrupting digestion and containing antinutrients.

Fmgd:

Definitely...you ought to be able to store food and retrieve it later.  That's what IFing is about: eating big meals and then letting yourself run on the stored energy.  The problem is, as I explained in Part IV, obesity generally comes with mitochondrial dysfunction -- an inability to access the energy we've stored.

As far as cooking, you're about right: the earliest solid evidence for control of fire is about 250,000 years ago (earlier dates are sometimes claimed, but the evidence is ambiguous and not widely accepted AFAIK), and its effect on our evolution is a whole article in itself!

"...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."

Recall that satiation is driven by satiety.  If you've already eaten a bunch of steak that day, steak will most likely satiate you more quickly at dinner because your body doesn't need more...whereas if you've been stuck eating noodles and bento for two weeks, as I was in Japan, meat was not satiating until I couldn't physically cram any more into my stomach.

I appreciate your thoughts.

Txomin:

I'm honored.

If you want to tip me, the best way is to buy a copy of The Gnoll Credo from the links on the right sidebar...and to buy direct from the publisher if you're in the USA.  (Already have one?  Gift one to a friend!)  You can also make your Amazon purchases through the link in the right sidebar, which gives me a referral spiff without increasing your cost at all.

JS

Kris:

I wanted a Coke just to keep me awake...otherwise pizza made me fall asleep.  I think there are a lot of different motivations involved.

Definitely the dehydrated foods require more liquids...and if you're in a situation where you're buying Cheetos, you're also likely to buy a Coke, considering that at most convenience stores soda costs less than water.  Note the synergistic effect: dehydrated, salty foods make you thirsty, and sodas contain so much sugar that they don't quench thirst very well...

Franco:

Thanks for reminding me!  Jamie put up a bunch of posts recently, and as I was out of town, I managed to skim right over that one.

That's a very interesting lead, and it definitely confirms my anecdotal experience: SAFA is more satiating than PUFA.  Maybe I'll describe the experiment I did someday.

JS

JL:

I find the same thing...prime rib never becomes tiresome!

You imply a good point:  I think the drive for novelty in food is a result of nutritional incompleteness.  Our bodies are signaling "Hey, we're short on some important nutrients here, better find something different than you've been eating."  Of course none of the processed "foods" on offer satisfy those nutritional needs, so we bounce around from novelty to novelty, gaining weight yet never being satiated.

JS