Omega-3s Fight Appetite

Fiber has many favorable functions for the body, including its ability to lower cholesterol levels, keeping the body “regular” – if you get my drift – preventing various forms of cancers, and controlling glucose levels in the blood. But its main appeal is to dieters or people who are trying to eat healthier. Why? Because fiber helps ward off hunger by providing a greater sense of satiety during and after a meal (high fiber foods also tend to take longer to chew, allowing the body more time to react to whether or not it’s still hungry). Of course, high fat foods do the same thing, but high fiber foods do it the healthy way, avoiding the portly pitfalls associated with high fat.

But a recent study published in the journal Appetite says that another healthy nutrient suppresses hunger pangs as well: omega-3 fatty acids.

The mere mention of the term “fat” may make dieters run in the other direction, but if you’re at all familiar with the various forms of fat, you know that not all fat is bad. Case in point, omega-3s, as they’re composed of polyunsaturated fats, the healthy kind of fat found in healthy sources like nuts, seeds, oily fish (like salmon and trout), plant-based foods (like avocado), and cooking oils (like olive oil and canola). Unlike saturated fats – which come from animal-based products (beef, duck, etc.) and dairy (like whole milk, butter, margarine, eggs and cheese) – polyunsaturated fats help lower cholesterol levels, decreasing the risk of coronary artery disease (a more specific form of heart disease, the country’s leading cause of preventable death).

Before I get to the specifics of the study, the very idea that omega-3s help decrease hunger pangs is like killing not two birds, not three birds, but a whole gaggle of them with one stone: it decreases obesity levels, decreases cholesterol levels, decreases cancer risk, reduces inflammation levels, increases blood flow fluidity…the list goes on, but I’ll stop there.

Now, on to the study: Approximately 230 thirty something participants were given meal plans that were meant to help them lower their weight levels, as each of them were either overweight or obese. In addition to their meal plan, they were told to adhere to taking an omega-3 supplement, with one group receiving a much higher dosage of omega-3s than the other (1,300 mg of omega-3 per day versus 260 mg per day).

At the seventh week of the study’s eight week duration, the researchers assessed the participants’ blood levels to see the relative amounts of omega-3s in their bloodstream. They also asked each of them to assess how hungry they’d been feeling right after a meal and two hours after a meal since the start of the study (a properly balanced meal with average portion sizes should result in hunger pangs about two to three hours following a meal). Uniformly, the researchers found that the participants supplemented with the higher dose of omega-3s felt less hungry immediately following their meal as well as two hours after. And as one might suspect, they also had higher levels of omega-3s in their blood than the group receiving the lower omega-3 supplement.

The study had a triumvirate of university researchers, all hailing from different European countries: the University of Navarra in Spain, the University of Iceland and University College Cork in Ireland.

Of course, one can always eat foods higher in omega-3s to increase satiety, but there are great omega-3 supplements to consider as well. My favorite is Carlson’s Fish and Cod Liver Oil. Find out more about it by reading my article, “Protect Your Heart with These Miracle Fats.”