Have you heard of the Sensa diet? It involves dusting whatever you eat with sprinkles that promise to enhance the pleasure of eating and make you feel satisfied more easily and eat less. Here's the website's description of how it works:
As you eat smell and taste receptors send messages to your brain which release hormones that tell your body it's time to stop eating. This is a phenomenon we call Sensory Specific Satiety. By enhancing smell, SENSA® Tastants were designed to help speed up the process and trigger your "I feel full" signal, so you eat less and feel more satisfied."
Ordinarily I would dismiss this sort of thing as a gimmick, but I recently learned that the guy behind it is Dr. Alan Hirsch, a Chicago-based smell and taste researcher who I have interviewed many times over the years for various magazine articles. Dr. Hirsch has always struck me as a dedicated scientist and very sincere, and I can't imagine that he would put something like this on the market that he didn't 100% believe in. He's definitely no snake oil salesman.
I know that my personal opinion of the guy based on a few phone interviews isn't much of an endorsement of a diet method, and just because he's a true scientist with good intentions doesn't mean his product is effective. After scouring the internet for testimonials I found many satisfied customers who claim Sensa helped them lose weight like nothing else has, by zapping their appetites, eliminating snack attacks and helping them stop eating when they know they should. But there are also plenty of reviews from people who say that Sensa didn't help them or upset their stomachs. So, if you have to lose weight, should you give Sensa a try? Though I obviously don't have the answer, I'd be willing to bet that Sensa is a helpful product that could you're your weight loss efforts a boost if you're truly committed to eating better and exercising more. But you certainly don't need me to tell you that it's no miracle cure. You can read some real people reviews of Sensa on the product's Facebook page.
If you've tried Sensa I'd love to hear about your experience!
