The best high-satiety foods

What are the best and the worst foods for weight loss, metabolic health, and simply getting lean and strong?

There are many wildly dogmatic approaches to this. At Hava, we take an agnostic approach that works with any food preferences. It's a simpler and potentially more effective approach called "satiety per calorie" or SPC. Arguably, it's the future.

We rank foods based on all the most evidence-based factors, including protein, fiber, energy density, and how addictive (hedonic) a food is.

The benefit of this? A more flexible way of eating, that allows you to eat any food and still reach your goals.¹ In fact, it may be more effective than any other approach, as many people have found.

What to eat

Our SPC score predicts which foods cause you to eat more or less. Low scores (promoting overeating) to the left, balanced in the center, high scores to the right. The high-scoring ones support rapid weight loss while maintaining lean mass.

Think of 50 as the mid-point. Aspirationally we aim to have this be foods that give you a normal weight and health under normal circumstances.

Now on to the foods and scores!

Visual satiety guides

Looking for more graphs like the one above? Find them for various food categories here:

High-satiety vegetables
Fruits and berries
Sauces and condiments
Meats, eggs, and seafood
Dairy
Snacks
Nuts

Low-satiety foods

At the very low end we obviously find foods like cookies, cake, candy and sugar-sweetened beverages.

However, this overview is based on the most popular foods that people log in our @JoinHava app. Considering that our customers are fairly health conscious, these low-scoring foods may represent common mistakes. Alternatively, they are conscious choices that people make, balancing them out with higher scoring foods.

At the very low end we find dark chocolate (2). This is commonly perceived as a health food, but it’s in fact mostly fat and sugar, highly addictive, and very low in protein. Looking at even darker 70% chocolate, it scores 4 - 7 depending on the brand. Dark chocolate is delicious, but keep in mind that it’s far from helpful for weight loss.

Another potentially surprising thing is that nuts score low, particularly cashew nuts (12). Note that this score is for plain cashews – roasted & salted versions score even lower (4). Nuts are commonly perceived as healthy, but they are very energy-dense and low in protein. Salted versions can also be addictive and hard to stop eating (I’ve noticed this myself many times). If you’re looking for slightly higher-scoring nuts, your best bet is peanuts (34) or almonds (31). Processed versions like peanut butter score lower. It’s more hedonic due to added salt, it’s higher fat and lower in fiber.

Wrapping up the low end of common foods we find butter (10) and olive oil (15). These are obviously extremely high in energy density and low in protein and fiber. Pure oil is actually the higest possible energy density (9 kcals/gram). Note that these scores are for eating pure oil or butter – not exactly a weight-loss food! However, cooking with modest amounts of butter or oil – e.g. for cooking meat, fish or eggs – can still be a good idea. The combined score may easily end up at 50+ in most cases.

We wrap up the low end with grapes (21). This is among the lowest-scoring fruit due to its high sugar content and lack of fiber. Dry grapes to get raisins and the score drops further, to 14, as the energy density increases.

The middle

The middle section contains great everyday foods. Depending on your goals these can be eaten freely. However, if you’re looking for rapid weight loss or improved body composition you may want to mostly choose foods in the top half of this section.

At the low end of the middle section, we find regular full-fat cheese, e.g. cheddar cheese (35). The more full-fat cheese you eat the more challenging it may be to lose weight. This is a common experience! Avocado is a surprise to many as it “only” scores 34. In modest amounts this is no big deal, but you may want to mix it up with higher-scoring foods.

Common fruits like banana (39) and apples (46) score fairly close to the center, as does blueberries at 48. Most other berries (e.g. raspberries, strawberries) score even higher as they are lower in sugar.

Bacon scores 44. This is a fairly high-fat meat product, and most unprocessed meats, fish and eggs score higher.

Examples include eggs at 59 (a solid score), and regular ground beef at 66.

Rounding out the middle section we find carrots at 64, a great score.

The top end

In the top section, with scores of 70+, we find foods that will make you eat the fewest calories. These can be extremely helpful if you want to be satisfied and nourished while eating less.

Pretty much all leafy vegetables are found here, including lettuce (100), and also the very popular tomato (82). Obviously these are not enough on their own, but they are great additions to other foods.

Chicken breast (77) and many other chicken meats can be found here, as well as most fish and seafood.

Another popular food is regular cottage cheese (70), with low fat versions scoring even higher.

Finally, the real cheat code that helps many people get lean and strong is non-fat Greek yogurt at 89! This is an amazingly helpful food (personally I eat it most days).

Rounding out the top 21 foods is … coffee at 100. Now, coffee isn’t very satiating on it’s own (you need food too!) but the score is satiety *per calorie* and that is very high. Coffee will always be a boost, and black or with only some milk added it’s a great assist.

Summing up

So, that was the top 21 foods – the low and the high scoring.

For much more support and fun photo tracking and analysis, try our Hava Eat satiety app. Get your free trial here.