Low fat foods feed right into the public's preoccupation with high calorie foods and weight management. However, as we're finding out, this doesn't work! A study out of the University of Vienna studied the effect of four different fats and oils that were added to yoghurt over a three month period to see if it made a difference whether they consumed lard, butterfat, rapeseed oil or olive oil.
Olive oil had by far the most impressive effect in creating satiety and was also associated with the biggest rise in the feel good and satiety producing effects of serotonin. Again olive oil had the most impressive rise in the level of this hormone.
Because olive oil and rapeseed oil have very similar fatty acid profiles, they turned their attention to the aroma compounds found in olive oil. One group was given olive oil extracts in their yoghurt and the other only ate plain yoghurt. What they found is that the group with the olive oil extract ate 176 fewer calories per day!
Lastly, because satiety is closely related to blood sugar levels they looked for compounds in the extract and their effect on blood sugar utilization in liver cells and found that two compounds slowed the absorption of glucose from the blood!
