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People often try sticking to a low calorie diet in order to lose weight, but soon find themselves craving for going back to a rich diet. While the way creamy food and diet rich in fat tastes could be one of the factors, another reason could be that people on low calorie diet do not feel full.

A new research suggests that if some subtle manipulations of texture are made to a low calorie diet and if a little creamy flavor is added, it can increase the expectation of a person that a fruit yoghurt drink will be filling and suppress hunger regardless of actual calorific content, Medical Xpress reported.

Currently there is a debate on how full low calorie foods and drinks make people feel and for how long. Also, there are questions if they actually make people consume more food or drinks since the calorie expectation of the body is not fulfilled.

For the current study, researchers from the University of Sussex experimented by adding a thickening agent (tara gum), which increased the sensation of thickness, stickiness and creaminess to a yoghurt drink, and checked for its effectiveness in manipulating the expectations of feeling full on participants.

The findings of the study revealed that even those who had no training on food tasting could accurately pick up subtle differences in drink texture even though the taste remained the same.

Also, the participants were asked to rate how filling they expected a drink to be, by selecting a portion of pasta that they thought would have the same effect on their hunger as drinking a bottle of yoghurt.

It was found that participants, on an average, expected thick and creamy drinks to be more filling than the thin or non-creamy versions, and when the creamy flavor of a drink was enhanced further, it increased expectations of fullness among people.

However, according to the report, their contributions to expected satiety were not equal - only thickness (and not creaminess) had an effect on the expectation that a drink would suppress hunger over time, the report said.

"Hunger and fullness are complicated issues because it is not just the calories in a food or drink that make it filling. Signals from the stomach are important but so too is how the drink feels in the mouth. In our study both creamy flavour and texture affected expected fullness, but only thickness seemed to affect whether hunger was expected to be satisfied. This may be because thick texture is a characteristic of food that we associate with being full. Consumer expectations are important and our study shows that consumers are sensitive to subtle changes in oral sensory characteristics of a drink, and that thick texture and creamy flavour can be manipulated to enhance expectations of fullness and satiety regardless of calories," lead author of the study, Keri McCrickerd, said.

The study was published in BioMed Central's journal Flavour.