New Zealand Bitter Hops Extract Reduces Hunger During a 24 h Water Only Fast

Abstract

Intermittent fasting improves metabolic and cardiac health. However, increased hunger towards the end of the fasting period may affect compliance and limit its application. Our aim was to determine the effect of anorexigenic agent co-therapy on subjective ratings of appetite during the 16–24 h period of a day-long water-only intermittent fast. Thirty adult men were recruited and required to fast for 24 h from 18:00 h to 18:00 h on the same day of the week for three subsequent weeks. Treatments of either a placebo or one of two doses (high dose; HD: 250 mg or low dose; LD: 100 mg) of a bitter hops-based appetite suppressant (Amarasate®) were given twice per day at 16 and 20 h into the fast. From 18–24 h of the 24 h fast, both the HD and LD treatment groups exhibited a statistically significant (p < 0.05) > 10% reduction in hunger. Additionally, the expected lunchtime increase in hunger that was present in the placebo group (12:00 h) was absent in both the HD and LD groups. These data suggest that appetite suppressant co-therapy may be useful in reducing hunger during intermittent fasting, and show that bitter compounds may regulate appetite independently of meal timing.

Effects of gastrointestinal delivery of non-caloric tastants on energy intake: a systematic review and meta-analysis

“…The characteristics of the 25 studies described in 19 papers are summarized in Supplementary Table 1. All studies included healthy volunteers [27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45]. Most studies included volunteers with a normal BMI between 18 and 25 kg/m 2 [27-38, 40-42, 44, 45].…”

“…1 Flow chart of the selection process; from identification of possible eligible papers to papers included in this review and meta-analysis a BMI between 23 and 32 kg/m 2 [39]. Eleven studies described inclusion of both women and men [27,28,[34][35][36][37][38][40][41][42][43], four studies described inclusion of men only [29,30,44,45], and four studies described inclusion of women only [31][32][33]39]. Table 2 provides an overview of the tastants used by included studies and the ligand receptors that are activated per tastant.…”

“…Sixteen studies (12 papers) investigated post-oral taste delivery of bitter tastants. Six of these studies used quinine alone [27, 29-31, 33, 42], five studies (two papers) used [28,32], one study investigated quinine and naringin [35], one study used a bitter mixture consisting of raisin flavor, sucrose octaacetate, and quassia extract [39], one study used bitter secoiridoids [37], and one study used bitter New Zealand hop extracts [45]. Different bitter compounds activate different (combinations of) TAS2 receptor subtypes in humans [49,53] [49,53].…”

“…This concept deserves further evaluation. To date, a significant number of papers [27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45] describing the effects of post-oral delivery of non-caloric tastants (i.e., exposure to tastants anywhere distal to the oral cavity) on eating behavior, and in particular energy intake, have been published. However, due to inconsistent results reported in these papers, the effect of post-oral delivery of non-caloric tastants on eating behavior remains unclear and a detailed overview of the literature on the effects of post-oral delivery of non-caloric tastants on eating behavior is lacking.…”

Factors affecting flavor perception in space: Does the spacecraft environment influence food intake by astronauts?

“…A recent review (Wang et al., 2020) highlighted that bitter receptors are located in oral and intestinal tissues and are in close contact with parts of the food‐intake control system (Wang et al., 2020). Some studies indicate that bitter compounds can affect specific parts of the food‐intake control mechanism (e.g., changes in hormone levels or gut motility) (Avau et al., 2015; Bitarafan et al., 2020), whereas other studies have focused on the overall effect of bitter compounds on food intake compared to a control diet (Andreozzi et al., 2015; Mennella et al., 2016; Walker et al., 2019).…”