#2. You Tend to Eat More

Fat makes other foods more palatable. When fats are mixed with other foods, as in many commercially made products or in home baking, for instance, you eat much more than you would have done if the food had consisted simply of the other ingredients. Sugar not mixed with fat is hard to eat in quantity. Think of a meringue (just sugar and egg white): how much could you eat at one sitting? But combine sugar with fat – in, say, a slice of cream cake – and you can eat much more. Fats, probably because they melt in your mouth, make it very easy to slip down hundreds of extra calories. Apply that to a baked potato. It seems to be much easier to eat with a huge knob of butter than it is on its own. Dry bread you will eat until you feel full, but spread it with butter and you will probably eat two or three times as much. Fats in and on food make us eat more.