Can a Ho Ho curb your appetite?

Dinner conversation is always amusing at my house. I try to talk. Scott and Josh try not to take me seriously and point out my faulty thinking. Jesse laughs. Lilly steals my food while all this is going on. Last night was no different as I brought up the interesting topic of eating a piece of fruit before dinner.

Scott and I have been trying to eat healthier. Scott tends to eat few carbohydrates. I tend to cut calories as a whole. But either way this theory I learned from an article my friend shared with me seemed to be a win. She showed me an article which suggests if you eat a piece of fruit before each meal there is something that goes on in your body causing you to be full and thus eat less at the meal. Now I realize at this point my scientific reasons for this were vague and there in lies the problem when sharing the new found information. I guess you could say I went in unarmed w/ good information. My mistake.

I brought this information up as dinner conversation with Scott. I said, "Scott, I don't remember the reason why this works, but in an article, April, shared w/ me it stated if you eat a piece of fruit before each meal, you will then for some chemical reason eat less at the meal because you will feel satisfied sooner." At that point I should have just said, "Let the bantering begin!" for it did.

Josh, who never misses anything I say with flaws, instantly replied, "If you eat anything before your meal you'll be fuller and eat less!" Scott agreed, "He's got you there. Could you eat Ho Ho's before the meal? That would fill you up." The joking went on quite a bit from that point. I finally tried to end the conversation with an exasperated, "Fine, eat Ho Ho's!" still on it went. I think, however, my favorite moment in this conversation was when Lilly ran into her playroom and came running back in delight w/ her stuffed monkey saying "here's Hoho! Her Hoho is a little white monkey character on one of her favorite shows, Ni Hao, Kai-lan. Isn't it obvious, the fun never ends at our dinner table.

So it seems if you have a good tip to share w/ your family and your family likes to point out where there might be flaws in that tip, come prepared w/ the reasoning behind the tip as well. I'm not sure it would have mattered in this family where I, believe it or not, play the straight man to their humor, but it might help my credibility just a bit.

For now, I say eat a piece of fruit before your meal, because that sounds better for you than eat a HoHo or a Hoho before mealtime. But if it's snacktime, I suppose I say eat responsibly and don't over do it. I have no scientific backup information to go with this advice. It's just my theory.