TIP  — Start your meal with soup, salad or fruit.

Eating three cups of green salad with fat-free dressing cut the number of calories people consumed at a meal by 12 percent. This was the finding in a study from Penn State University at University Park.

My favorite low-fat dressings are Newman’s Own Sesame Ginger or Ken’s Steakhouse Raspberry Vinaigrette. Lately, however, I’ve been squeezing a thick slice of lime and tossing the juice with a teaspoon of honey and a dash of red wine vinegar.

Dieters in another Penn State study who used two 10-½-ounce servings of broth-based soup per day for a year lost 50 percent more weight than those who consumed the same number of calories from low fat snacks.

Do you think this means that what they say about “a calorie is a calorie” as far as weight gain or loss, no matter what the source of that calorie is false? I suspect that it means that you eat more calories when you consume artificial food like “low fat snacks” that when you consume real food that has real fiber in it.

Not to mention the craving that are set off  by consuming processed food and carbs.

So, yes, likely a calorie is a calorie when it comes to weight gain or loss — on the surface — but not when it comes to satisfaction /satiation, which is where our issue most often is.

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