Brett Smith for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
When eating a meal, we typically don’t feel full until we’ve eaten much more food than we need – resulting in those extra calories being added to our body in the form of stored fat. Researchers from the United Kingdom may have found a way to hack that process.
According to a new study in the journal Gut, a compound known as inulin-propionate ester (IPE) can be added to food to make it more filling.
IPE contains propionate, which causes the stomach to discharge hormones that tell the brain to lower feelings of hunger. Propionate is generated naturally when dietary fiber is broken down by microbes in the gut, but IPE supplies greater amounts of propionate than people can get with a standard diet.
In the first part of the study, 20 participants received either IPE or inulin, a nutritional fiber, and were told they could eat what they wanted from a buffet. Volunteers given IPE consumed an average of 14 percent less than their counterparts and had greater levels of appetite-reducing hormones in their blood.
In the second part of the study, 60 overweight participants were tracked for 24 weeks with half of the group given IPE powder to supplement their food and the other half given inulin. The study team saw that 1-in-25 participants given IPE who finished the study gained over 3 percent of their body weight, as opposed to 6-in-24 participants in the inulin group. Not one of the volunteers in the IPE group gained greater than 5 percent of their body weight, as opposed to four in the control group. The IPE group also had less fat in the stomach and liver compared to the control group.
“We know that adults gain between 0.3 and 0.8 kilos (0.8 and 2.1 pounds) a year on average, and there’s a real need for new strategies that can prevent this,” said study author Gary Frost, a professor of medicine at Imperial College London.
“Molecules like propionate stimulate the release of gut hormones that control appetite, but you need to eat huge amounts of fiber to achieve a strong effect,” he added. “We wanted to find a more efficient way to deliver propionate to the gut.”
Frost said the new “proof-of-principle study” demonstrates that supplemental IPE could prevent weight gain in people who are already overweight.
“You need to eat it regularly to have an effect,” he said. “We’re exploring what kinds of foods it could be added to, but something like bread or fruit smoothies might work well.”
“Packaging propionate up to more efficiently deliver it to the large intestine has allowed us to make direct observations in humans that propionate may play an important role in weight management,” said study author Douglas Morrison, a biochemist at the University of Glasgow. “These exciting findings could at last open up new ways to manipulate gut microbes to improve health and prevent disease.”
Study researchers are currently working with technology company Imperial Innovations to take the novel ingredient to market.
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