Applied Volumetrics
I applied an idea from the “Volumetrics” diet plan for lunch today. The basic idea is that if you eat foods with low energy densities, you will feel less hungry later during the day. This will tend to make you cut down on snacking. So, to the left I have a “low energy density lunch”. I know it looks like a plain ordinary tuna fish sandwich with a side of red peppers, right? So, what’s special? Well, it’s lower energy density than a similar lunch I would have snarfed down when I wasn’t thinking about my diet. Let’s look at the ingredients. First, my ordinary recipe for making the tuna sandwich is mix half a can of tuna with 1/2 tablespoon of mayonnaise, spread that on bread; eat. We’ll call that “the baseline”. Yes, it’s a lazy gal’s sandwich. Lower the energy density I added 2 tablespoons of diced celery to the tuna salad. Because the tuna salad is about 6 tablespoons in volume (I measured), adding the 2 tablespoons of celery increases the volume of the filling 33%. Then, to lower the energy density further, I added a lettuce leaf. I didn’t measure the volume, but I figure this lowered the density a bit too. The These additions barely changed the calorie count. Without the celery and lettuce the sandwich is roughly 350 calories, with them it’s still roughly 350 calories. (If you can do a more precise estimate, more power to you, but I can’t.) The main things are: the crunchy celery and lettuce make the sandwich tastier and the increased volume should help me be less hungry later in the day. Next, and this is the big thing: I sliced up a cup of red peppers and added those to my plate. One cup of peppers has about 40 calories, and as you can see, that volume is almost as large as the whole sandwich. If you look at the plate, it’s pretty easy to see that adding the peppers nearly doubles the volume of the lunch. That’s supposed to help keep me from feeling hungry. It’s 5:10 pm now, and so far, I’m not feeling like eating. So, maybe this does work! 
