Eat carbs and starches last when hungry
Have a habit of skipping meals? A new study shows that people who sit down to eat after an overnight fast are more likely to ignore protein, fats and vegetables and head straight for high-calorie carbohydrates and starches first.
"I think this emphasizes the importance of controlling your environment as far as the types of foods you're exposed to when you're hungry and how much of them you can get," said Aner Tal, a postdoctoral research associate in the Food and Brand Lab at Cornell and lead author of the study, published in Archives of Internal Medicine. "Because otherwise, you will mindlessly choose foods that are less healthy for you."
For regular dieters and people who frequently find themselves ravenous after missing meals, Dr. Tal said the lesson is to keep high-calorie foods out of reach, or at least make them less visible in the pantry or kitchen cabinets. But he also pointed out that the findings could be useful to hospitals looking to provide better nutritional options to food-deprived patients, since fasting is often a requisite before operations and other medical procedures. Vegetables, salads and fruit should be made more visible and convenient in cafeterias, he said, and hospitals could reduce serving sizes of starches like pasta and mashed potatoes, "or offer them in combo meals that balance the amount of starches with protein and vegetables."