Our body has an innate need to maintain a certain temperature to ensure the proper functioning of our biological processes. This process of heat generation in warm-blooded animals is called thermogenesis. Humans are warm-blooded animals. We burn energy in this process.
What we will be discussing here is Dietary-induced thermogenesis, also called Thermic Effect of food.
What is Specific Dynamic Action or Thermic Effect of Food??
“Specific Dynamic action (SDA) or Thermic Effect of food (TEF) is the amount of energy that our body burn above the Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) as the cost of processing food for use and storage1 (Wikipedia).”
In simple language, it is the amount of energy that our body will spend on processing the food that we eat. Here, “processing” means activities like ingestion, digestion, excretion etc.
Factors That Affect Thermic Effect of Food
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Age
Thermic effect of food decreases as we grow older.
One study2 (Du et al., 2014) found that young adults in the age group of 18-35 years experienced the higher thermic effect of food compared to older adults of 60-88 years of age even when they had a similar amount of lean tissue and consumed similar size of a meal.
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Obesity
Obese people have a lower thermic effect of food.
A study3 (Segal et al., 1985) observed that lean men had higher Thermic Effect of food than obese people.
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Physical Activity
Thermic effect of food increases with an increase in physical activity.
It has been observed4 (Arciero et al., 2000) that for older women, the thermic effect of food shows a positive correlation with aerobic activity. It means that the thermic effect of food increased with aerobic activities like running, walking, etc.
Both aerobic and anaerobic activities have a positive correlation with the thermic effect of food1 (Wikipedia).
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Energy Content
A higher energy meal reduces the thermic effect of food.
The energy content of a meal, but not meal composition, has a significant influence on Thermic effect of food, says a study5 (Kinabo, 1990).
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Type of Nutrients
Meals with high-protein content may result in up to 20-35% as the thermic effect of food.
This is because components like protein are hard to process whereas that like dietary fat is easily processed1, 6 (Wikipedia; Glickman et al., 1948).
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Ginger Consumption
Evidence suggests that ginger consumption has anti-inflammatory, anti-hypertensive, glucose-sensitizing and stimulatory effects on the gastrointestinal tract.
In this study8 (Mansour et al., 2012), consumption of Ginger showed a positive correlation with a thermic effect of food.
Potential Benefits of Thermic Effect of food
Thermic Effect of food includes energy consumed for digestion, absorption and disposal of ingested nutrients and accounts for about 10% of our daily energy expenditure.
According to a 2013 study9 (Clegg et al., 2013), adding chilli and medium-chain triglycerides to meals increases Dietary-Induced Thermogenesis (DIT) by over 50% which over time may accumulate to help induce weight loss and prevent weight gain or regain.
The results from another study10 (Kasai et al., 2002) suggests that, in healthy humans, the intake of 5-10 g of medium-chain triacylglycerols (MCT) causes larger diet-induced thermogenesis than that of long-chain triacylglycerols (LCT), irrespective of the form of a meal containing the medium-chain triacylglycerols (MCT).
You don’t have to be confused by the technical aspects. What I’m trying to say is that any attempts at leveraging this phenomenon in your body can become the game-changer for your weight loss plans.
For starters, you can try tweaking some of the factors that are mentioned above and experiment by incorporating them into your diet.
References