I found an article this morning, that was quite interesting, at least to myself. It goes along the lines about what I was saying previously about finding foods, snacks that have substance without all those calories. The example they use between a 1/4 cup of raisins which have high caloric content, vs's 2 cups of grapes? I mean that is awesome. I can sit and munch on grapes like that fora while, and it would satisfy my crunching crave, etc. while taking longer to eat it all. There have to be a ton of examples like that, and at the moment I have none. But any kind of vegetable is going to give you the same kind of benefit ultimately.
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http://www.wired.com/medtech/health/magazine/17-07/lbnp_nutrition (Wired Magazine)
Calorie-Dense Foods Are Doing Us In
"When you're doing something that dramatically changes your eating habits, it's not sustainable," says Barbara Rolls, the Guthrie Chair of Nutritional Sciences at Penn State University. "A lot of diets are very prescriptive, like ‘Just don't eat white foods.' People lose weight, but then those foods are singing to them in the night. We're not a species with a lot of willpower."
Rolls started to research satiety — or what makes us feel full. "The data clearly show that calorie density, which correlates to water content, has a significant effect on energy intake. It's not portion size per se that makes people overeat; we're eating big portions of calorie-dense food." Rolls' diet plan — called Volumetrics — focuses on the energy density of foods.
The key is to focus on foods that contain fewer calories per a given volume, so you feel full without consuming as many calories. Rather than a 100-calorie snack of raisins (a quarter cup), with Volumetrics you'd have 100 calories of grapes (two cups).
"The exciting thing about this as a strategy for weight management is it directs you to healthy, nutritious foods you should be eating anyway," Rolls says. "Because our eating behavior is so sensitive to volume cues, regardless of caloric density, there are a lot of opportunities to make changes and eat less. We have such good food technology now that we can get more vegetables in and get fat out and not lose taste. But the food industry is very slow to change. We need to motivate the people who provide food to us to do this."
–Joe Lindsey