In a recent study, young men who ate a lunch including mashed potatoes prepared with heart healthy mono unsaturated oil stayed satiated longer than when they ate the same lunch with either rice or mashed potatoes prepared with polyunsaturated oil.

"Rice prepared with polyunsaturated oil was the least effective in delaying the return to hunger over an eight-hour test period," says Dr. S. E. Specter, Penn State assistant professor of nutrition and first author of the international research team's report.

"Speaking practically, these preliminary data suggest that the type of oil you cook with may affect satiety," he adds. "Our study indicates that mono unsaturated oils, which other researchers have shown can help lower cardiovascular disease risk, could also be important in helping control appetite."

The study was conducted in Paris, France, at the Hôtel Dieu hospital when Specter held a postdoctoral appointment there before joining the Penn State faculty. No other controlled studies have simultaneously varied the type of dietary fat and carbohydrate in normal, balanced meals to examine the time-course of the return of hunger.

Specter presented the findings for the first time in a poster, today (April 16) at the Experimental Biology 2000 conference in San Diego, Calif. His co-authors include Dr. Bernard Guy Grand, head of the departments of nutrition and internal medicine at Hôtel Dieu, J-L. Joannic, S. Auboiron, J. Raison, M. Champs, A. Basdevant, and F.R.J. Bornet.

Twelve healthy, normal-weight men, about 24 years of age, took part in the study. On one day a week for each of four weeks, they ate breakfast and lunch at the hospital. For lunch they were served chopped steak, French bread, a side dish of either mashed potatoes or rice, a piece of cheese and an apple. The mashed potatoes and rice were prepared with either a high mono unsaturated oil mixture (60 percent sunflower and 40 percent soybean), or a high polyun
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Contact: Barbara Hale
bah@psu.edu
814-865-9481
Penn State
15-Apr-2000