The Flavor Point Diet

Jan. 10, 2006— -- "Good Morning America" medical contributor Dr. David Katz has come up with a diet that promises to let people eat all their favorite foods and still lose weight.

After conducting extensive research at the Yale-Griffin Prevention Research Center, Katz found that by following flavor themes each week, dieters could reach the flavor point at which they'd feel completely satisfied and full.

Combining his medical knowledge with his wife's expertise -- she is a neuroscientist as well as a gourmet cook -- Katz has created a diet that he says will result in people eating less not because they are starving themselves but because they feel full.

An excerpt of the book is below.

Tapping into the Flavor Point will revolutionize the way you think about eating.

At some point during every eating experience, we all begin to feel full and fulfilled. When you reach that point of fulfillment -- what I call the Flavor Point -- you stop eating. If you reach the Flavor Point early enough, you will feel full and fulfilled on fewer calories. If you reach the Flavor Point too late, you overeat.

How do you reach the Flavor Point more quickly and fill up on fewer calories?

That's what the Flavor Point Diet is all about. This revolutionary diet taps into this little-known but scientifically proven fact: Flavor variety stimulates the appetite center in your brain, while flavor repetition soothes it. You can eat a variety of flavors over time, but eating too many flavors at any one time puts your brain's appetite center into overdrive.Let that sink in for a minute. It's every bit as profound, powerful, and life changing as it is simple. To safely and permanently lose weight without being hungry, you need only organize the flavors in your meals and snacks. Don't misunderstand me, though. You don't need to give up flavors. You don't need to give up specific foods or entire categories of foods. You don't need to give up the joy of eating delicious food, and you certainly don't need to give up the convenience of easy-to-prepare foods.

The Power of Flavor Organization

From breakfast cereals to snack foods to fast foods, our culinary landscape has become crowded with an overabundance of conflicting flavors that overstimulate important appetite-controlling cells in our brains, making us need more and more food to reach the Flavor Point. For example, many sweet breakfast cereals contain as much salt as potato chips. Yes, salt! Conversely, salty snack foods often include lots of sugar. You don't always notice all of these flavors when you eat, but your brain registers their presence, triggering hunger and overeating.

When you taste too many flavors at once -- whether from too many different foods or too many flavors processed into one food -- you overeat before feeling full. On the other hand, when you organize flavors in your diet, you feel full and satisfied on fewer calories and lose weight without feeling hungry! Quite simply, you will want to eat less!

The Flavor Point Diet subdues appetite on two levels. First, it uses the powerful benefits of flavor themes to subtly organize your eating. These themes infuse your meals with a specific flavor, such as orange or chocolate or pineapple. When you taste this flavor repeatedly throughout your day, you more quickly satisfy your brain's appetite center so you're able to fill up on fewer calories. Second, you'll shift to a new way of eating -- to the Flavor Point way of eating. You'll learn how to choose and cook delicious meals using relatively simple, wholesome, minimally processed foods that don't contain an overabundance of extraneous flavors.

Over the next 6 weeks and beyond, the Flavor Point Diet will change your appetite, your weight, your appearance, your health, your relationship with food, and your life -- for good! The plan comprises three phases.

Phase 1. During the first 4 weeks of the meal plan, you'll drape a delicate flavor theme over your meals for an entire day, with every meal and snack sharing a common ingredient. On Cranberry Day, for example, you'll eat delicious cranberry-banana muffins for breakfast, a salad with cranberries for lunch, cranberry and onion turkey cutlets for dinner, and Cranberry-Vanilla Soft Ice Cream for dessert. On Pineapple Day, you'll have a pineapple smoothie for breakfast, Pineapple-Walnut Chicken Salad for lunch, and Pineapple Shrimp for dinner. On Lemon Day, you'll have lemon-poppy muffins for breakfast, Lemon Tabbouleh Salad for lunch, and lemon-flavored tilapia for dinner.

This subtle yet repeated exposure to the same flavors will subdue your appetite center in a delicious and powerful way. But you won't eat enough of the flavor of the day for it to feel monotonous. Instead, your appetite center will merely register the flavor and, as a result, feel soothed and contented.

Phase 2. As you get into the habit of choosing and preparing foods according to Flavor Point principles, you won't need to depend on the daily flavor themes as much to control your appetite. In other words, as your mastery increases, you'll need fewer rules. This is why, during weeks 5 and 6, the meal plan includes a greater variety of daily flavors. In this phase, each meal or snack has a theme, but there's no single theme throughout the day. Thus, the flavor theme for your breakfast will not be the same as the one for your lunch, and each of those will differ from dinner. For instance, breakfast might have a lemon theme, lunch a basil theme, and dinner a tomato theme. In each meal, the flavors are subtle but effective, harmonizing the food -- and your appetite!