Why You Should Start Your Meal with Soup or Salad
By EatingWell Editors, "The EatingWell Diet: Tips for a New You,"March/April 2008
Fill up first on soups and salads—and eat fewer calories later.
Filling up on fiber- and water-rich foods first can help prevent you from overdoing high-calorie fare later. Research out of Penn State shows that eating a first-course salad can reduce overall calorie intake at a meal by up to 12 percent. And in a study in Appetite last November, people who started lunch with vegetable soup ended up eating 20 percent less than those who skipped the soup.