Project Slim!  

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By David L. Katz, MD, MPH, FACPM, FACP Associate Professor of Public Health Director, Prevention Research Center Yale University School of Medicine Associate Director, Nutrition Science Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity Yale University Medical Contributor, ABC News

• View sample recipes from The Flavor Point Diet
• Read about The Flavor Point Diet as featured in Newsweek
• Media coverage of The Flavor Point Diet and book
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• Hear Dr. Katz' interview for Barnes & Noble about the Flavor Point Diet, and how it fits in with larger efforts to fight the obesity epidemic. (Select the audio link in the lower-left sidebar under "Find Related Items.")

• Book Premise:

The 'Flavor Point Diet' approach is based entirely on the neuroscience of appetite, and specifically, sensory specific satiety: the tendency to stay hungry longer and eat more when flavors are very diverse and keep changing, and to fill up on fewer calories when flavor variety is controlled. Using flavor themes, and by directing readers to food choices that have fewer flavors designed into them during processing, the Flavor Point Diet subdues appetite and allows for weight loss with no or minimal hunger, while maintaining a perfectly healthful, balanced diet suitable for the whole family at every step of the way.

• Goals & Objectives:

To offer a 'diet' that would allow for prompt enough weight loss to satisfy the public, while avoiding the food exclusions that tend to be used to deliver rapid weight loss, then followed by rebound. To base a diet approach on 'how' to control appetite and eat less, rather than on reinventing 'what' constitutes healthful eating. To devise a plan in which the nutrition is completely sound and balanced and in accord with the highest scientific standards at every step. And to devise a 'diet' that is suitable for all members of a household, so that families are engaged in a sustainable approach to both weight control, and better overall health.

• Novel Elements:

The diet is based on a very extensive scientific literature examining the neuroscience of appetite. While building in many other elements, the main focus is on the single most important thing about food: its flavor. Flavor variety stimulates appetite, increasing the calorie count required to achieve fullness (think large family meal and feeling stuffed, then still finding room for dessert). The food industry engineers superfluous flavors into innumerable products in the form of salt in sweet foods (such as breakfast cereals and desserts), sugar in salty foods (such as dressings and spreads), and artificial flavors. The Flavor Point Diet first uses flavor themes to help readers control the overall variety of flavors in their typical day, meal, and snack; and then guides readers to achieve the same thing at the level of individual foods by choosing those items that avoid or minimize unnecessary flavor additions.

The Flavor Point Diet approach was crafted only after an extensive review of the scientific literature on weight control, and appetite regulation. The meal plan was 'home made' rather than farmed out to professional chefs, and 'field tested' in the Katz household consisting of 2 adults and 5 children ranging in age from 6 to 17.

• Relevant clinical experience:

I have been using the principle of sensory specific satiety in dietary counseling to excellent effect for nearly 15 years.