Fibre in the diet contributes directly to dampening the appetite, British researchers have revealed.
The scientists have discovered a molecule released by fibre in the gut influencing the brain.
The findings come after the latest study showing that a high fibre diet can help protect people with heart disease.
They could lead to the development of new anti-obesity drugs.
Reporting in Nature Communications, the researchers say that fibre digested in the body releases large amounts of acetate, which influences the appetite.
The research involved the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas in Madrid together with a team in London, UK.
Researcher Professor Gary Frost, from Imperial College, London, said: “The average diet in Europe today contains about 15g of fibre per day.
“In stone-age times we ate about 100g per day but now we favour low-fibre ready-made meals over vegetables, pulses and other sources of fibre. Unfortunately our digestive system has not yet evolved to deal with this modern diet and this mismatch contributes to the current obesity epidemic."
He added: "Our research has shown that the release of acetate is central to how fibre supresses our appetite and this could help scientists to tackle overeating.”
He explained: "Acetate is only active for a short amount of time in the body so if we focussed on a purely acetate-based product we would need to find a way to drip-feed it and mimic its slow release in the gut.
"Another option is to focus on the fibre and manipulate it so that it produces more acetate than normal and less fibre is needed to have the same effect, providing a more palatable and comfortable option than massively increasing the amount of fibre in our diet."
Fellow researcher Professor Jimmy Bell said: "It’s exciting that we have started to really understand what lies behind fibre’s natural ability to suppress our appetite and identified acetate as essential to the process. In the context of the growing rates of obesity in western countries, the findings of the research could inform potential methods to prevent weight gain."
G. Frost et al. The short-chain fatty acid acetate reduces appetite via a central homeostatic mechanism Nature Communications May 2014; doi:10.1038/n-comms4611.
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