From Business Insider
Here's an experiment: sit alone in a hospital room for two weeks and eat nothing but ultra-processed foods like hot dogs, muffins and chicken salad.
You probably wouldnot love the results.
But that is exactly what 20 men and women did in a recent, regorously controlled study from the National Institutes of Health. Those participants ended up gaining an average of 2 pounds in those two weeks on this ultra-processed diet.
They also consumed about 500 additional calories every day, compared to a different two-week period in which the same people followed an unprocessed meal plan.
The scientists behind the study which is publish Thursday found that this discrepancy arose because patients who were fed precessed meals tended to overeat, even though researchers controlled for how much salt, fat, sugar.
This is the first time that we can actually say that there is casual relationship between something that is independent of the nutrients.
His teams isnot yet sure why processed food makes us hungerier, but they have a few educated hypothese....Additionally, people tend to eat unprocessed foods more slowly, which give our body more time to register that we are full befor we overeat.