Everyone knows eating food relieves hunger, but all too often, appetite takes over. When that happens, it’s easy to exceed energy needs and eat too much. Putting the brakes on appetite is what satiety is all about.

Many product development projects today focus on satiety as a way to short-circuit excess consumption. Satiety is a major trend in products that support weight management — an important means to combat the obesity epidemic and chronic disease.

Polydextrose, a widely approved dietary fiber that carries just 1 Cal per g, has been found to promote satiety, according to a number of studies. But the question is, how much will do the trick?

New clinical research offers an answer. It documents a positive effect on total daily energy intake when Litesse Ultra polydextrose from DuPont Nutrition & Health was consumed in a mid-morning snack. The findings indicate an optimal polydextrose dose required to promote satiety and reduce subsequent energy intake.

Published online Jan. 23 by the British Journal of Nutrition, the study was conducted at University of Nottingham in the UK by a team led by Nerys Astbury, PhD, from the New York Nutrition and Obesity Research Center.

Serving a snack before a meal is a common approach in studies of satiety, according to Michael Bond, health platform leader, active nutrition, DuPont Nutrition & Health, Reigate, UK.

The snack offered was a chocolate milk drink with polydextrose in varying doses of 0 to 25 g per serving. Researchers served the drink 90 minutes ahead of an unlimited pasta-based test meal. The randomized, crossover study used 21 healthy, normal-weight participants, 12 men and nine women. Researchers determined the exact energy consumption by each participant up to the point they declared themselves comfortably full.

The highest dose produced the greatest satiety, and all dosage levels resulted in greater satiety than the 0-g control. Researchers concluded that impact on satiety is dose-dependent. When the whole day’s intake was considered, both the 12.5-g and 25-g doses were linked to a lower total intake.

DuPont feels this study is of particular importance because of what it adds to earlier research examining the role of polydextrose in satiety. “This latest research provides greater insight into the optimal dose of polydextrose required to achieve satiety and its potential as part of a weight-management regime,” Mr. Bond said.

While chocolate milk is not a baked or snack food, it made a good matrix for comparing an actual food with one containing the compound being tested, in this case Litesse Ultra. “As such, any additive satiating effect can be attributed to the test compound,” Mr. Bond said. “In theory, the results should therefore be transferable — but there is no guarantee of this.”

The amounts of polydextrose involved with the best outcomes — 12.5 g and 25 g, or nearly ½ oz and 1 oz, respectively — seem high for some applications. “A 25-g dose obviously requires a relatively large delivery vehicle,” Mr. Bond observed. “But it would be achievable in yogurt, beverages and some baked foods, bearing in mind that polydextrose can be used to replace the bulk provided by sugar in these applications.”

For additional information about Litesse, a part of the DuPont Danisco range of products that improve nutritional profiles, visit www.danisco.com.