In June my nephew Brian came to visit his U.P. relations for a few days. Six-foot two, blonde, toned, tanned and healthy, he fits right into the college campus scene. Like most young adults, he eats out almost every day.
You would never guess he had been overweight as a kid.
“I changed,” he explained to me as we sauntered down Third Street in search of lunch. “Fries. Sure I still eat fries…you have to have some treats. But mostly I try to eat healthy.”
I suggest trying Sweet Basil Deli. Can’t beat their smoked turkey with sliced avocado sandwich. He’s game. We head inside.
Brian towers over me: I am five-foot-four. He’s got me by a foot and probably ninety pounds. One menu. Same sandwich choice. But two very different customers, at least in terms of calorie needs.
Research into the enigma of weight loss has come full circle; we’ve lived through the fat-free craze, no-carb Atkins approach and the latest evidence suggests what we all suspected all along: ultimately, it is calories that count.
Barbara Rolls, Ph.D., director of Pennsylvania State University Laboratory for the Study of Human Ingestive Behavior, has been studying what controls human appetite for the past thirty years. Her research has unveiled some useful facts to the average person trying to control weight.
First, humans tend to eat in units. There is a strong tendency to finish one plate of pasta, one sub sandwich or one bottle of soda. Giant-sized portions served in restaurants can spell trouble on the scale. Take the “macaroni and cheese” study, for example. In her research lab at Penn State, Rolls offered adults four different portions of macaroni and cheese. When given the largest portion, they ate thirty percent more calories when compared with the smallest. Fewer than half noticed any difference in portion size. Roll’s sandwich experiment had similar results. When the size of a submarine sandwich was varied from six-, eight-, ten-, and twelve-inches, women ate thirty-one percent more calories and men fifty-six percent more calories when offered the twelve-inch sub compared to the six-inch sub.
Brian and I took our turkey-avocado subs to the lake for a picnic lunch. I polished off the entire sandwich. One unit. “Was that enough for lunch?” I asked him. He was done first. “Sure.”
One size sandwich. Two different calorie requirements.
Because big portions encourage overeating, the restaurant industry has gotten the blame for the rising obesity rates on our country. But relying on someone else to determine what is an appropriate portion size for your personal calorie needs is risky business. Most chefs rely on experience and tradition, not calories and nutrients, when deciding on a portion size to serve.
Don Curto, owner and chef extraordinaire of the New York Deli, recently lost more than fifteen pounds “for health reasons,” he explained to me as we sat at a round table in his sunny, comfortable restaurant.
“I eat here (in the restaurant)—I just eat a little less.” Curto is happy about his weight loss. No forbidden carbs, although he nixes rich desserts.
I looked over the menu carefully. There were at least a dozen sandwiches offered that are good choices for people watching their weight. Lean turkey and ham. Vegetarian. Optional sliced tomatoes and lettuce. Mustard, not mayo.
“Anyone can order half a sandwich,” Curto said. “We make things to order here, using all fresh ingredients. And we make our own soups every day.”
Fresh ingredients. Lean meats. Whole grain breads with texture, vegetables with crunch. The essential ingredients for slenderizing our waistlines, I tell him. And here’s why.
Pasta lovers pay attention to a study Rolls conducted in her food lab. When women of normal weight were served a pasta dish for lunch, they ate about the same amount of food for the entire day, no matter whether the pasta dish was high- calorie (made with mostly noodles and a rich meat sauce) or low-calorie (made with extra vegetables, as a primavera). The bottom line: they ate about three pounds of food per day, no matter what the number of calories. On the days when their lunch consisted of pasta with vegetables they consumed about thirty percent less calories. They felt just as full and satisfied—but they were consuming 400 less calories per day.
The concept of energy density—that is, the number of calories in a given weight of food—is not new. Nutritionists have understood for years that foods with a high number of calories in a small serving rarely cause a person to decrease the amount of calories eaten at a later meal in the day. Our stomachs, it appears, are more sensitive to the volume of food eaten than the calorie count.
“Sure, we serve great salads,” said Terry Doyle, owner of the Union Grill. “But I can’t stop someone from pouring on salad dressing.”
Filling up on low-energy, dense foods helps to send our stomach signals that we’re satisfied. We’ve had enough.
The energy density of a food is easy to figure out, just divide the calories in one serving by the weight of the food in grams. For example, two tablespoons of full-fat salad dressing has an energy density of 3.6 (110 calories/28 grams), whereas a fat-free dressing has an energy density of 1.2 (40 calories/28 grams).
Most fruits, vegetables and low-fat dairy products have an energy density less than one. Lean meats, fish, poultry without skin, potatoes and pasta have an energy density between one and two. Very dry foods, like melba toast, chips, cookies and french fries have two or more times as many calories as their weight. These are the foods that need to be controlled.
The Union Grill has a slogan that reads Fast Fresh Food.
“We are just getting our roasters up and running,” Doyle said. “This slow cooking method allows us to use fresh meats, and the meat is cooked very lean. There’s no added salt or nitrates.”
Lean meat and bread have an energy density between one and two. Even so, a single sandwich may have as much as four ounces of bread and five ounces of filling.
“It’s about double the size of a sandwich you would make at home,” I said.
Doyle assured me the Union Grill is flexible. Orders can be split with a friend or wrapped to take home. Personally, Doyle confided, he prefers eating soup and salads, especially during the day.
“With a touch of olive oil and rice vinegar on my salad and bread.”
Doyle has his own version of a low-energy dense diet, and, at fifty-four, his trim physique is an indicator that it works.
It’s easy for our brain to override hunger and fullness signals from our stomach. The key to weight control is recognizing that satiety, or the sensation of fullness, seems to be food-specific as well as volume-sensitive. That’s why we can be pushing ourselves away from the table too full to eat another bite of turkey, and then turn around and eat apple pie. We will respond to whatever fires up our brain. The solution? Keep around plenty of low-energy, dense foods (strawberries, tomatoes, greens, soup) to satisfy our need for variety. Otherwise we will fill up on energy-dense foods (pizza, chips, fast food, cookies).
“I do eat candy,” Brian was feeling like he might need some dessert, “but I don’t buy big candy bars anymore, just those mini ones.”
Jackie Gonda and her husband, Patrick, are the importers of the infamous Belgian chocolates at Gopher’s Café. They offer sixty varieties of chocolates, a sight that can get anyone’s brain neurons firing, no matter how much they just ate for lunch.
“We’ll go to Gopher’s,” I told Brian. “You won’t be disappointed.”
Mindful of my hearty lunch, I select one chocolate. Brian has three, and saves the rest for another day.
Good food and good health. You can have it all—it’s your choice.
—Donna Marlor

Editor’s Note: Donna Marlor, MA, BSN, RD is the Director of Weight Management at Marquette General Health System. She can be reached at 225-6955, www.mgh.org/weight

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