STUDY EXAMINES WHAT KEEPS US FROM EATING

Scientists know more about the factors that contribute to the size of the meals we eat than they know about the factors that keep us from eating between meals.

Some clues, however, are starting to emerge on "satiety factors," in other words, the signals that tell your brain when it's time to push away from the dinner table.

"It appears that some peptides may play a role in limiting meal size, as well as the intervals between meals" says Dr. A. Kurt Thaw, assistant professor of psychology at Millsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi. Peptides are combinations of amino acids.

Dr. Thaw is the first author of a paper, "Mammalian Bombesin-like Peptides Extend the Intermeal Interval in Freely Feeding Rats," published in Physiology and Behavior,(vol 64, number 3, copyright 1998) a scholarly journal.

Dr. Thaw and co-researchers James Smith of Florida State University and James Gibbs of Cornell Medical Center, gave Bombesin-like peptides to a group of rats over several days and compared the amount of food they ate to the food eaten by rats that did not receive the peptides. They found that the rats that did not get the peptides ate significantly more than those that did. More importantly, the reason for the decrease in feeding was due entirely to a substantial lengthening of the interval between the meals. This increase was even greater as the dose of peptides increased.

This research built on a previous study by the same scientists that examined the impact of Bombesin peptides on rats under more controlled feeding conditions. This latest research was done with rats which were free to feed at any time, a situation which more closely approximates the normal feeding conditions without including any kind of food restriction that might interfere with meal patterns.

"There are literally hundreds of variables that go into why we eat and why we stop," says Dr. Thaw. "We're not going to find any magic pill. But I do think it's useful to examine satiety factors. Very little work has been done in the area of intermeal intervals."

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Editors: Dr. Thaw can be reached at [email protected] or by phone at 601-974-1381. If you would like to see a copy of Dr. Thaw's paper, please call Steve Infanti of Dick Jones Communications at 814-867-1963.