I’ve searched a lot and haven’t been able to find an authoritative, satisfying answer.
Not only I but apparently many other people have noticed that even after a huge satiating meal, eating an apple for desert will then result in hunger pangs 15 min. later, as if no meal had been eaten.
Apples are sweeter than most folks think. They’re pretty darn glycemic. That may provoke a small blood sugar spike/crash in some sensitive people.
The traditional gibe about eating Chinese food and being hungry again in 30 minutes is similar. The white rice is pretty glycemic and many sauces have/had a bunch of sugar in them. Sugar-laden sauces were pretty rare in other American cuisine back in the '60s when the typical Chinese restaurants & takeouts became mainstream and the joke about the being hungry again gained currency.
Certainly not everyone will have this experience. And nobody is hungrier after eating 2 or 3 or 4 apples. But folks whose hunger system is more glycemic-driven than stomach fullness-driven may experience this.
I don’t know about apples after a meal (especially if that meal has protein in it) making you hungry, but most days I eat an apple and peanut butter around 9:30. If I eat just an apple, by 11:00, I’m ravenous. But with the peanut butter, I’m fine till lunch.
My theory is that the apple by itself spikes my blood sugar levels then is gone, leaving me with high insulin levels. If I eat protein with it (in the form of peanut butter), after I’ve burned off the relatively simple carbohydrates of the apple, my body has broken down the more complex peanut butter and is now using that for energy.
Try skipping your regular breakfast tomorrow and just having an apple. At least for me, if all I eat for breakfast is an apple, I’m ravenous by 9:30 am but if I don’t eat anything at all, I may be hungry but not distractedly so until about 11:30.
I agree with the OP and this is why I have a hard time eating fruits and vegetables alone when trying to eat better. I get hungrier even as I am eating them and feel more than empty afterwards.
Fruits and vegetables and drinking water – all healthful things and all things that make me even hungrier!
I read somewhere that apples are good for acid reflux. Apples are alkaline and contain a lot of water (compared to meat or bread, for example). Would they have any effect on the acid in your stomach, and could the water and alkaline affect your stomach receptors that tell you you’re full, or is this all a bunch of woo?
I have had a similar a experience with bananas. If I am feeling a bit peckish in the office at about 4 PM and eat a banana, I soon after am ravenous to the point of feeling weak.
Apples are alkaline? Eat a Winesap, Braeburn or King David and tell me it’s alkaline. Apple juice has a pH of 3.35 to 4. Seven is neutral, alkaline is over seven.
I have noticed the effect you’re describing. I won’t eat apples unless I know I have other food to hand. I get powerful, clawing hunger pangs (in fact more intense than I ever get even if I am hungry from fasting)