British scientists develop ingredient to make food more filling

British scientists have developed an ingredient that makes foods more filling and say initial tests in overweight people showed that it helped prevent them gaining more weight.

The ingredient, developed by researchers at London's Imperial College and at the University of Glasgow, contains propionate, a natural substance that stimulates the gut to release hormones that act on the brain to reduce hunger.

Propionate is produced naturally when fibre in the diet is fermented by microbes in the gut, but the new ingredient, inulin-propionate ester (IPE), provides much larger amounts of propionate than people can generate in a normal diet.

"Molecules like propionate stimulate the release of gut hormones that control appetite, but you need to eat huge amounts of fibre to achieve a strong effect," said Gary Frost of Imperial's department of medicine, who led the study. "We wanted to find a more efficient way to deliver propionate to the gut."

In a study published in the journal , Frost's team gave 20 volunteers either IPE or inulin, a dietary fibre, and then allowed them to eat as much as they liked from a buffet.

The team found that those given IPE ate 14 per cent less on average and had higher concentrations of appetite-reducing hormones in their blood. In a second phase, 60 overweight volunteers took part in a 24-week study in which half were given IPE powder to add to their food and half given inulin.