Nestle's Plan to Trim Your Waist: Trick Your Belly

Scientists at Nestle are working on food to fool our stomachs. They’re studying the “gut brain”—which tells us when we’re hungry and when we’re full—in an effort to develop products that will keep us feeling full longer and thus reduce overeating, the Wall Street Journal reports. The “gut brain,” or enteric nervous system, is a complex mechanism, but scientists think they can manipulate it.

Certain oils, for example, take longer to digest, which may help induce feeling of fullness, or satiety. To test their hypotheses, scientists have built a giant digestive system in a Swiss lab. With its help, they hope to have new products on the market within 5 years. Other companies have tried, to unsatisfying results—but Nestle believes that a diverse approach, prompting the body to send out several kinds of satiety signals, could do the trick.
(More Nestle stories.)