An amusing look at a component of our food - one that gets more fun the moment you compare what different languages call it.

German has a single word for it: “Sättigungsbeilage” - a compound welded together from Sättigung (satiety) and Beilage (side dish), so, literally, a “satiety side dish”. English has no such word. It reaches instead for “the starch”, “filler”, or “side dish” - none of which promise anything.

And that asymmetry is the joke: German built the wishful thinking right into the noun, then handed the job to the one macronutrient least able to keep the promise. English just says “the starch” and, entirely by accident, stays closer to the truth.

The Promise

Can “the starch” keep the (German) promise? Does it actually sate you?

Just as with hunger, we first need to look at which kind of “sated” we even mean. For simplicity I’ll distinguish only two: “full” and “satisfied”. A starchy side will certainly make you full - especially when the starch comes with a generous helping of indigestible carbohydrate, a.k.a. fibre. All of that swells up, binds water, and adds volume: you reach “full” faster.

The three kinds of hunger

A dog staring at a cake

Hunger (in the Plural)

We act as if there were only one kind of hunger - there are actually three, and the dietary guidelines mostly talk about number four.

Read more →

Satisfying hunger is a different matter. Recall: we distinguish homeostatic, hedonic, and conditioned hunger. A “satiety side dish” is not the classic food you get conditioned on, and a side dish is hardly the centre of attention when you’re after a reward. So hedonic and conditioned hunger drop out, leaving homeostatic hunger: and that one is settled for maybe 90 minutes - until blood sugar, having risen on the carbohydrates, falls back below its starting value, and the body signals the next bout of hunger through that dip alone. Entirely justified, by the way: at that moment the body really is short on energy.

An Experiment

I do like experimenting: how about a meal without a satiety side dish, without carbohydrates? That could be an omelette with plenty of butter, a fatty steak, or anything else that brings along enough protein as well as fat(1).

Now the all-you-can-eat version of that meal: we simply keep eating more and more of it, until we can’t go on.

How does it taste?

At first: “Delicious!”, “More of this.”

After a while: “I couldn’t take much more.”

A little later still: “I can’t go on!”, “This doesn’t even taste that good anymore.”

And that “I can’t go on!” is meant quite seriously by the body: we’re dealing with a very calorie-dense meal, the antithesis of the usual dietary guidelines, which go out of their way to make us as full as possible on low calorie density and high volume.

That “doesn’t even taste that good anymore” is the body’s long-unlearned signal that it has now had enough. An unusual definition of “sated”.

And this feeling of being “sated” lasts a good while too, compared with a carbohydrate-rich meal. With that one, blood sugar sinks below its starting point some 90 minutes later and signals: “We have an energy emergency here.” Also known as “hunger” - legitimate!

When the body legitimately signals hunger

a few stacks of empty plates

Overfed and Undersupplied

An alternative interpretation of hunger: what if we’re not hungry because we need to eat, but hungry because of what we ate? A useful mental model…

Read more →

Optional (not advisable) continuation of the experiment: even now, when nothing more will fit, there is always room for a sweet dessert. Which neatly demonstrates the sabotage carbohydrates are capable of - in this case, sugar.

A Broken Promise

The Sättigungsbeilage is the only part of the plate that (in German) carries its job in its very name - and is the most reliable at failing it.

In English the promise is at least kept, because only the dominant macronutrient gets named. But in the end that doesn’t make it any better.

The Sättigungsbeilage outsources our calorie needs to the cheapest ingredient. In a restaurant we pay for the protein; the starch comes with it - and it helps keep the expensive ingredients within limits. Handy, then, that the cheap ingredients also sit right at the top of the dietary guidelines in general. And that despite usually coming with only a low micronutrient content.

The experiment has shown that “sated” and “full” are two different states, all too easily mistaken for one another.

As for me: which satiety side dish to go with the steak? Gladly another one. And butter.

I don’t want my food to be filling. I want my food to be nourishing.

  1. Anyone restricting themselves to plant-based foods will have a slightly harder time finding natural proteins without carbohydrates. But perhaps imagination is enough? Perhaps it is worth the experiment anyway? Alternatively: just try it out in the simulator. It even has a category for ketogenic foods, which probably makes the selection easiest. For this experiment, best to avoid the berries.