Anticipatory sensory specific satiety

The term ‘sensory specific satiety’ (SSS) describes the decline in pleasantness of a food as it is eaten relative to other foods that have not been eaten. SSS is thought to develop gradually within a meal and to play an important role in the control of meal size. Outside the laboratory, meals tend to be planned in advance and to be consumed in their entirety. Therefore, we sought to explore the extent to which SSS is anticipated during pre-meal planning. Participants (N = 30) were presented with sets of two food images, each representing a first or a second course of a hypothetical meal. The two courses were either: (i) exactly the same food, (ii) different foods from the same sensory category (sweet or savoury) or, (iii) different foods from a different sensory category. For each pair of images, participants rated their expected liking and their ideal portion size of the second course. The effects of similarity across courses and of differences in sensory characteristics were additive—the second course was rated as more liked and was selected in a larger portion when it was followed by a different food that had different sensory characteristics. To our knowledge, this is the first study to show that SSS is learned and anticipated in meal planning. This suggests that an opportunity exists to enhance the satiety of pre-packaged/prepared foods by enhancing their ‘anticipatory sensory specific satiety.’ This research was supported by a BBSRC-DRINC grant (ref: BB/G005443/1).