Today I tried something new for breakfast: a protein shake. I've been getting a lot of complaints at work that my eggs stink up the place, which I don't really understand -- egg beaters in the microwave just smell like eggs to me. I did find that hard boiled eggs mixed with Tabasco sauce smell pretty bad, but taste darn good. Regardless, I decided to be considerate and try something else. I couldn't think of something quite as easy and suggestions like cereal and oatmeal were obviously out. So I picked up a small bag of protein powder and mixed it with heavy cream to add in some fat, and sure enough, I was full until lunch time.
As it turns out, protein is an excellent tool for
keeping hunger at bay. A study, which is set to appear in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, compared the different macro-nutrients and their effect on ghrelin. Ghrelin is a hormone secreted by the stomach that stimulates appetite. The study only tested sixteen people, so it doesn't seem very conclusive but I did find this bite about carbohydrates really interesting:
Basically, the carbohydrates eventually made people even hungrier than before they had eaten.
