For the overwhelming majority of my life I despised hot, spicy foods. Oh, I love layered flavors: a dash of cinnamon in a bowlful of chili, a few drops of pure vanilla in my French toast, even chocolate flavored with a hint of cayenne. (Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it.) But truly hot foods? No thanks.
Part of the problem, I think, is that when it comes to cooking most people mistake heat with burn: they pour Tabasco into a sauce and call it “Cajun-style” or toss chopped jalapeños into a dish — seeds and all — and call it “Southwestern”. No thanks. I value my tongue and my palate sufficiently to protect them from such tortures.
A few years ago I started getting serious about home cooking. (Subscribers to my Home Helper Newsletter, which provides weekly dinner menus, new recipes and grocery lists along with lots of other goodness, know that I clearly love to try new and interesting foods.) One of the first things I learned was how to make my own spice blends for soups, dry rubs and other dishes. After mixing them together, I began storing them in magnetic spice jars stuck to the side of my fridge where they’re out of direct sunlight and away from heat. (Here are my favorites, by the way.)
Turns out maybe I shouldn’t just use those blends while cooking, because research has shown that the addition of certain spices or flavors can lead to weight loss by increasing an eater’s satisfaction.
The study of “tastants” — substances that can stimulate the sense of taste — included 2,436 overweight or obese people who were asked to sprinkle a variety of savory or sweet crystals on their food before eating their meals. They used the salt-free savory crystals on salty foods and used the sugar-free sweet crystals on sweet or neutral-tasting foods. The participants didn’t know what the flavors of the crystals were, other than salty or sweet. The hidden flavors of the savory tastants were cheddar cheese, onion, horseradish, ranch dressing, taco, and parmesan. The flavors of the sweet tastants were cocoa, spearmint, banana, strawberry, raspberry and malt.
A control group of 100 people didn’t use tastants. Both groups continued their normal diet and exercise habits during the study.
At the start of the study, the treatment group had an average weight of 208 pounds and an average body mass index (BMI) of 34, which is considered obese. After six months of using the tastants, the 1,436 people in the treatment group who completed the study lost an average of 30.5 pounds, and their BMI decreased by an average of five points.
In the control group, the average weight loss was two pounds, and the average BMI decrease was 0.3.
Thirty pounds lost by simply adding a few flavors isn’t something to sneeze at (unless you’re allergic to onion or strawberry, I suppose). In my own experience I’ve noticed myself eating less when a food delivers a big taste in the first few bites, but I’d never really thought about the connection.
Could it be that many of us eat more than we should simply because we’re searching for something more flavorful than, say, the benign squishiness of a Big Mac or the bland waxiness of most chocolate bars?