Also: sneaking veggies into children’s meals

Cutting how much food you eat – and calories – may take one simple step: eating a low-calorie soup before you dive into the main course.

Participants in a university study who ate soup before their entrée cut their calories by 20 percent compared to when they went straight to the meal.

“Using this strategy allows people to get an extra course at the meal, while eating fewer total calories," said Julie Flood, a doctoral student in nutritional sciences at Penn State University who helped conduct the study. "But make sure to choose wisely, by picking low-calorie, broth-based soups that are about 100 to 150 calories per serving.

“Be careful of higher-calorie, cream-based soups that could actually increase the total calories consumed."

Chunky or low-cal?

Dr. Barbara Rolls, a nutrition expert at Penn State University who also conducted the project, said the findings expand upon previous studies on consuming lower-calorie soups as a way to cut the amount of food you eat at a particular meal.

Some research, however, showed the chunkier soups were the most filling, but Penn State’s team found that low-calorie soups also will fill you up, Rolls added.

Rolls and her team served soups made with separate broth and vegetables, chunky vegetable, chunky-pureed vegetable,  and pureed vegetable to get a sense of whether texture affected the way people ate. The soups were made with various combinations of chicken broth, broccoli, potato, cauliflower, carrots and butter.

The research was supported by a grant from the federal government's National Institutes of Health.

The concept of “volumetrics” – eating a satisfying volume of food while controlling calories and meeting nutrient requirements – is based on studies led by Rolls in her Laboratory for the Study of Human Ingestive Behavior at Penn State.

This spring, the paperback edition of her book, The Volumetrics Eating Plan: Techniques and Recipes for Feeling Full on Fewer Calories, is being published by HarperCollins.

Getting sneaky

As for families, Rolls suggested that parents who want their kids to consume fewer calories and eat more vegetables might find a healthy solution with "stealth vegetables."

“Many children are not eating enough foods that are low in calorie density, such as fruits and vegetables," she said. "Parents often find it difficult to get their kids to eat vegetables."

Decreasing the calorie density of foods by adding vegetables and other lower-calorie ingredients leads to a reduction in children's calories and an increase in vegetable consumption, another study by Rolls concludes.

Rolls and her team served two types of pasta to 61 children ages three to five. One pasta dish contained a higher calorie density – meaning more calories per gram – while the other dish as 25 percent lower in density but had broccoli and cauliflower in the sauce.

No turned up noses

The kids couldn’t tell the difference between the two dishes and ate equal portions, even the one with broccoli and cauliflower, which usually elicits turned-up noses from children, said Kathleen Leahy, a doctoral candidate and the project’s lead author.

When served the lower-calorie pasta, children consumed 17 percent fewer calories and ate significantly more vegetables, compared to the higher-calorie pasta. The children also showed no clear preference for either dish.
 
“The fact that we got the reduction in caloric intake is absolutely great, and the increase in vegetable intake suggests a strategy for improving diet quality,” Rolls said.

Leahy, however, notes that parents should still actively promote the consumption of vegetables by serving them regularly and eating them with their children.

"You not only want to increase their vegetable intake but also want to ensure that your kids will acquire a taste for vegetables," she added.

The study was funded by a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

For more information

•  Updating A French Classic

•  Weight Control: Don't Forget 'Energy Density'

•  Soup and Satiety: It Depends on Portions

•  Soup to the Rescue?

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For soup fans . . .

Find more than 215 soup recipes in Nubella's Recipe Database
and Eating Well Center.

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Source: Penn State University
Reference: Experimental Biology Conference, Washington, D.C.

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