Engineering Food With Aromas That Make Us Feel Full
Usually the enticing smell of food is associated with hunger pangs, but researchers in the Netherlands think that foods can be engineered to release satiating aromas during chewing. This would help combat obesity by stimulating areas of the brain that signal fullness. In a paper published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, the researchers outline how food products could be tailored to release a higher quality -- or a higher quantity -- of aromatic food molecules, thus discouraging overeating. Admittedly, the idea of the smell of food making us feel full rather than hungry seems a bit dubious, but it turns out it's not. "This is not a crazy paper," Dr. Linda Bartoshuk, an expert on taste and smell at the University of Florida, told PopSci. "This research, however, is very preliminary." The link between retronasal aroma -- that's the aroma that you smell when you are ingesting food, when...