In yesterday's post we discussed whether all calories are created equally, you can read that here, today we will look into why food quality matters, not just calories, when it comes to sticking to your diet and getting the results you want.
Generally speaking, foods that are heavily processed tend to be less filling than whole, unprocessed foods for the reasons mentioned in yesterday's post - they are often devoid of critical nutrients, such as dietary fibre, amino acids, antioxidants, dietary vitamins/minerals, in addition, they often have further 'empty calories' added to them in the form of solid fats and sugars to make them more enjoyable.
This is why when you ask people what the foods they typically over-consume are, they will almost always contain high amounts of solid fats, added sugar such as sucrose or high-fructose corn syrup or a combination of both. This is partly why fats and sugars are often wrongly stigmatised.
When we're hungry, we will seek foods that have a high energy density (more calories) but low nutrient density (less nutrients) as they will fix the problem of immediate hunger and potentially low blood glucose much quicker. We will also tend to over-consume them because they have low satiety and a high degree of taste.
When calories are matched, a diet consisting of primarily whole, unprocessed foods is much easier to maintain than one consisting of predominantly processed variants.
Due to the critical nutrients that will also be ingested your willingness and desire to ‘move more’ will also undoubtedly be increased.
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