Last Updated on April 12, 2024 by Fasting Planet
You’ve enjoyed the increase in energy you’ve had since starting the vegan diet, and you’ve even lost a few pounds. One problem though is that you almost always feel hungry. You need some vegan-friendly eats that will satiate your appetite for hours at a time. What should you add to your diet?
Here is the best vegan food for satiety:
- Popcorn
- Green peas
- Quinoa
- Soy
- Avocados
- Barley
- Fruit
- Brussel sprouts
- Potatoes
- Chili peppers
- Dark chocolate
What is it about these foods that promote satiety? In this article, we’ll go one by one and discuss why you need to incorporate more of these staples into your everyday eating habits. You won’t want to miss it!
This Is the Best Vegan Food for Staying Full
Popcorn
This one makes sense to you, since if you order a ginormous tub of movie theater popcorn with the viscous liquid butter and then eat about half of it, you feel full for hours. Well, that’s not what we mean here.
For one, you shouldn’t consume nearly that much popcorn in one sitting. Also, movie-theater butter likely uses non-vegan food coloring, so make sure that’s not part of your popcorn snacking habits either.
Plain popcorn contains 106 calories per 28.4 grams or one ounce, so it’s low in calories. Beyond that, popcorn is a whole grain that’s quite voluminous. No, not per kernel, but if you eat popcorn by the handful, you know this snack has some volume to it.
Healthline even cites a study that discovered that, compared to eating chips, popcorn will leave you fuller for longer. That’s mostly due to the 3.6 grams of dietary fiber per serving of popcorn. One ounce of chips only has 1.4 grams of fiber.
As if all that wasn’t great enough, the University of Scranton at Jesuit University published a study in 2012 revealing that popcorn has more polyphenols than even vegetables and fruit! What is a polyphenol? A type of plant-occurring micronutrient, polyphenols are antioxidants that have all sorts of benefits.
For instance, polyphenols aid digestion and brain functioning. Adding them to your diet may safeguard you from cancer, reduce your risk of heart disease, control your blood sugar, and lower your rate of blood clots.
Wow! Who knew popcorn could be so healthful?
If you get tired of plain popcorn, your vegan diet allows you to experiment with all sorts of toppings. Here’s a list to get you started:
- Coconut cane sugar with cinnamon
- Old Bay seasoning
- Dill with garlic powder, curry, lemon pepper, and soy sauce
- Cinnamon with garlic powder, chili powder, dill, and pickle juice
- Salt, garlic powder, and plum vinegar
- Smoked paprika with lime juice
- Taco seasoning with lime juice
- Sea salt, lemon pepper, and apple cider vinegar
- Chili powder and dill pickle juice
- Cayenne pepper and turmeric
- Onion powder, garlic salt, and balsamic vinegar
- Garlic powder with nutritional yeast
- Nutritional yeast and tabasco
- Salt, lemon pepper, and lime juice
- Sea salt, nutritional yeast, and chili powder
Green Peas
Vegetables are a staple of the vegan diet, but you’re often left wanting more.
It’s not necessarily the low-calorie content of veggies that leaves your tummy rumbling, but rather, how much water the vegetables contain. Celery and lettuce are up to 96 percent water apiece, the same is true of cucumbers, and tomatoes are 94 percent water. That doesn’t leave a lot to provide fullness.
Green peas are different though. Each serving of this tasty green veggie loads you up on protein, at least 8 grams per cup. At only 118 calories per that same serving size, you can continue eating a trim vegan diet but still get more of the protein you need.
The second reason a plate of green peas fills you up is that per cup, you’re ingesting 7 grams of fiber, which is pretty significant!
The journal Advances in Nutrition, in a 2010 report, says this about eating pulses like peas: “Based on the few studies that have been conducted, there is some indication that pulses may help to increase satiety, at least in the short term, and weight loss during intentional energy restriction over a few weeks.”
While the journal notes that longer-term research is needed to confirm the data, between their fiber content and their protein as well the fact that they’re low in calories, green peas are great to eat. Make sure you add some green peas to your vegan lunches and dinners, stat!
Quinoa
Everyone remembers when superfoods burst onto the scene, and the one superfood that won the most acclaim was quinoa.
Quinoa is a type of pseudocereal that shares a lineage with amaranth. As a whole grain, quinoa is beloved for its high levels of dietary minerals, B vitamins, dietary fiber, and protein. Of all the grains, quinoa has the most dietary minerals. No wonder it’s been labeled a superfood!
Somewhat more calorie-dense than the vegan-friendly foods we’ve discussed already, a cooked cup of quinoa contains 222 calories. If your lunch or dinner is fairly light, quinoa makes a filling side dish. You could even ingest it on its own as a snack if you really wanted to. Some quinoa fans add it to salads and even put quinoa in breakfast porridge.
Like green peas, the fiber and protein in quinoa are what promote satiety. Along with your 222 calories, you’re also consuming 5 grams of fiber and 8 grams of protein per serving of quinoa. That’s as much protein as what you’d find in a serving of green peas and slightly less fiber.
This 2015 report from the British Journal of Nutrition on how pseudocereals affect appetite shows that quinoa has promising potential for satiety. After three different experiments, the researchers noted that quinoa and other pseudocereals “are a good source of functional substances.”
Soy
Soybeans, despite that they’re technically beans, are not pulses. Why is that? Pulses are generally fat-free but soybeans are not. The beans are instead considered legumes.
Hailing from East Asia, soybeans are used to make a whole assortment of vegan-safe foods. They include tofu, textured soy protein, tempeh, soy sauce, soy nuts, soymilk, miso, and edamame.
Eating a soy-rich diet is tied to a bevy of health benefits. You may have a lower breast cancer risk, healthier bones, fewer menopause symptoms (in women), better fertility (again, for women), lower blood sugar and blood pressure, and a healthier heart.
The Journal of Nutritional Health & Food Engineering, in a 2017 publication, researched whether soy caused satiety in a group of men. The participants consumed egg albumin, sucrose, soy protein, and whey.
According to the study findings, the whey protein had the most satiety and the soy second-most. There seem to be no differences in satiety levels when eating soy protein compared to beef protein, the study also says, which is pretty interesting.
Soy is very fibrous, containing 17 whopping grams of fiber in a one-cup serving. We do want to caution you that a whole cup of raw soybeans if 830 calories, which is a lot! If you’re on a vegan diet and you’re trying to lose weight, limit your raw soybean consumption.
Tofu is much lighter calorically, only 94 calories for 124 grams of the stuff, or 0.5 cups. You also ingest 10 grams of protein yet only 0.4 grams of fiber. Thus, if you want to stay fuller longer, you might have to eat raw soybeans occasionally.
Avocados
Even non-vegans go gaga over avocados. This creamy fruit (no, avocado is not a vegetable) can be consumed raw, and its taste is fresh and delicious enough that avocado needs no seasoning either. Well, some people like avocado with a bit of salt to mute its somewhat sweet flavor notes.
Avocado skin is safe for consumption too, but it’s often too thick to enjoy. You can try munching on some skin, but those who do tend to report it feels like shoe leather.
A 2019 publication of the journal Nutrients assessed the satiety of avocados. Their study involved 31 adult participants who were either obese or overweight.
First, the participants ate a regular meal, then they had either an avocado-free breakfast or an avocado with a hollowed out bagel sandwich. The ones who ate avocado were fullest for the longest, including participants who ingested just half an avocado.
A medium-sized whole avocado may contain 250 calories and 23 grams of total fat. Halving an avocado of that size limits your calories to 130 with 12 grams of total fat.
If you’re still not totally convinced, avocados include the following minerals, vitamins, and nutrients as well:
- Folate
- Copper
- Phosphorous
- Magnesium
- Calcium
- Betaine
- Choline
- B vitamins (with the exception of vitamin B-12)
- Manganese
- Zinc
- Potassium
- Iron
- Vitamins E, C , K, and A
The satiety power of avocado means the fruit will frequently be featured on your grocery shopping list as a vegan!
Barley
Although it doesn’t have quite the same level of acclaim as quinoa, barley is another cereal grain that vegans should regularly incorporate into their diets. Its history may extend back 10,000 years ago when those in Eurasia harvested the grain and ate it.
Barley is incredibly rich in protein, containing 32 grams of dietary fiber per cup of hulled barley. It’s also not that light on the protein, with 23 grams in a cup. However, like soybeans, that large of a serving size of hulled barley can pack on the calories, with up to 651 calories in a cup.
Fortunately, you can eat barley in other ways besides hulled, although you will ingest fewer proteins and less fiber. For example, you can sip on barley water, which is made from boiled barley that’s strained and may have added sugar. Barley makes a great side dish like you would eat quinoa, and it’s a good addition to salads. You can also add barley to stews, soups, and even breakfast porridge, but use barley flakes there.
Outside of hulled barley and barley flakes, you can buy barley in pearls or grits. The pearls are steamed and have no bran or hull, so they do lack some nutrients that you get in hulled barley. To make barley grits, the grain undergoes cracking and toasting. It has somewhat fewer nutrients.
Compared to eating refined rice foods and whole grain wheat, whole grain barley may provide more satiety, states this 2009 report in the journal Appetite. To come to that conclusion, a group of participants ate meals containing one of the three foods. Then the researchers measured each participants’ visual analog scale before the meal and again after.
“…subjects reported significantly less hunger before lunch compared to their hunger before breakfast when consuming the barley, but there was no significant reduction in hunger before lunch after consumption of wheat or rice,” says the study.
Fruit
Not all fruit will make you full enough to get through your day. Like vegetables, several fruits are around 90 percent water, often more. Pears contain 89 percent water, cantaloupes 92 percent, blueberries 95 percent, pineapples 95 percent, and watermelons are 96 percent water.
Back in 1995, the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition published a satiety index of food, including 38 different types of food, including protein, carb-heavy foods, snack foods, bakery products, and fruit.
Oranges and apples are the two fruits with the highest satiety ratings. Oranges have a satiety rating of 202 percent and apples 197 percent. Following those two fruits are grapes with a satiety rating of 162 percent and bananas with a satiety rating of 118 percent.
Since they have lower water content than the fruits we discussed in the paragraphs above, oranges are voluminous sort of like popcorn is. Eating one orange probably isn’t enough to deliver a feeling of satiety, nor would one apple. By enjoying several fruits in one sitting, or even combining oranges and apples, the chances of you feeling full increase.
Brussel Sprouts
As a kid, you probably did everything you could to get out of eating Brussel sprouts. Now that you’re an adult, and especially as a vegan, you don’t mind them so much. That’s a good thing, as Brussel sprouts can induce satiety as well.
Part of it is the reduced water content in sprouts compared to many vegetables, as Brussel sprouts contain only 86 percent water.
The other reason why Brussel sprouts deliver satiety is that they contain 3.3 grams of dietary fiber in a cup’s serving. At only 38 calories per cup, you’re free to load up on Brussel sprouts for lunch, dinner, and even in-between snacking if you feel like it. That increases the fiber load of the sprouts, keeping you from reaching for another snack an hour after eating.
Just make sure you don’t overdo it, as Brussel sprouts can cause gassiness and bloating in some people!
Potatoes
Carbohydrates tend to get a bad rap, which we’ve discussed before on this blog. Although too many carbs may contribute to weight gain, carbs are an energy source that keeps your central nervous system, heart muscles, kidneys, and brain running healthy and strong.
In the case of potatoes, carbs are also what provides the spud’s hours of satiety. Remember the satiety index from the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition that we talked about a little while ago? The highest-rated food on that list was boiled potatoes.
A medium-sized regular potato contains 163 calories, 37 grams of carbs, 4.3 grams of protein, and 4.7 grams of dietary fiber. A potato-based vegan lunch or dinner or a meal with the spuds as a side will certainly keep you feeling full for a while. Even better is that potatoes are packed with calcium (2 percent), vitamin C (70 percent), iron (9 percent), vitamin B6 (30 percent), and magnesium (12 percent).
What about sweet potatoes? Since they’re skinnier than regular potatoes, sweet potato contains fewer carbs, only 26 grams. They also have 3.9 grams of dietary fiber and 2 grams of protein at 112 calories per potato.
If you need vitamin A in your vegan diet, eat a sweet potato. One spud contains 368 percent vitamin A as well as 3 percent calcium, 5 percent vitamin C, 4 percent iron, 15 percent vitamin B6, and 8 percent magnesium.
Chili Peppers
So far, it’s mostly come down to a food’s protein and fiber content when it comes to promoting satiety. Carbs and fats can also increase that feeling of fullness. In the case of chili peppers, it’s their capsaicin that prevents you from reaching for another snack so soon.
McCormick Science Institute published data on this very topic. In their study, 24 adult participants, including those at a normal weight and some who were overweight, ate spicy foods. Some such foods were red peppers with 0.25 percent capsaicin.
The study went on for four weeks, and the participants would ingest spicy foods for two days at a time, buffet style. The results? “…volunteers chose more carbohydrate-rich foods and less fat-rich foods from the buffet during capsaicin treatment.”
So it’s not necessarily the chili pepper itself that can encourage you to eat more filling foods, but the capsaicin in it that may lead you to seek out carbs.
Dark Chocolate
We’ve discussed dark chocolate (and milk chocolate) brands on this blog that are safe for vegans, and there are plenty of them. After a tough day, chocolate is a perfectly fine treat to enjoy. You just didn’t think it would make you full, but indeed, it can!
In 2011, the journal Nutrition & Diabetes looked at milk and dark chocolate and how both types impacted energy intake and appetite. Up to 16 lucky male participants were given 100 grams of chocolate. Some men ate dark chocolate and others milk chocolate.
Next, the researchers tested appetite sensations using visual analogue scales or VAS, doing this over five hours in 30-minute increments. After two hours, the men ate a meal.
Of the two types of chocolate, the researchers reported that dark chocolate made the participants less likely to seek “prospective food consumption,” as they were less hungry and had more satiety. The participants also had lower energy intake of the post-chocolate meal by a rate of 17 percent, meaning they ate less.
This 2010 study from Regulatory Peptides states that even smelling chocolate can affect ghrelin, the hormone within your gastrointestinal tract that’s responsible for hunger. As you start to feel that rumbling in your tummy, ghrelin in the blood is quite high. Once you eat, the ghrelin levels return back to normal, at least for a couple of hours.
The Regulatory Peptides study featured 12 participants, all of them female. First, they ate chocolate. In the next session, the participants either smelled chocolate or were in the control group, which went chocolate-free.
Here’s what the study concluded of the participants who first ate and then smelled the chocolate: “Chocolate eating and smell both induced a similar appetite suppression…However, while the correlation between VAS score and ghrelin disappeared completely after chocolate eating, it reversed after chocolate smelling, that is, olfactory stimulation with dark chocolate (85%) resulted in a satiation response that correlated inversely with ghrelin levels.”
Dark chocolate contains about 170 calories per ounce, including 12.1 grams of total fat, 7 grams of saturated fat, 13 grams of carbs, 3.1 grams of dietary fiber, 6.8 grams of sugar, and 2.2 grams of protein. Chocolate is relatively nutritionally empty, even the dark stuff, but it may have 21 milligrams of calcium, 203 milligrams of potassium, 3 milligrams of iron, and 11 milligrams of vitamin A.
Surely, you can spare room a few squares of chocolate if it will keep you from making unhealthy snack choices later in the day!
Conclusion
If your vegan diet often leaves you eager for foods that are a little more filling, we recommend modifying your diet by incorporating more of the foods we discussed today. From healthy yet satiating vegetables and fruits to grains and pseudocereals and even a few surprising additions like dark chocolate and chili peppers, you’ll have a rumbling stomach far less of the time while still eating vegan!