Familiarity changes expectations about fullness

Expected satiation (the extent to which a food is expected to deliver fullness) is an excellent predictor of self-selected portion size (kcal). Here, we explored the prospect that expected satiation changes over time. Fifty-eight participants evaluated expected satiation in eight test foods (including two ‘candidate’ foods: sushi and muesli) and reported how often they consumed each food. In one of the candidate foods (sushi), and across other test foods, expected satiation increased with familiarity. Together, these findings are considered in the context of ‘satiation drift’ – the hypothesis that foods are expected to deliver poor satiation until experience teaches us otherwise.