Eating or Drinking Cold Foods or Beverages…

I read a whole book on this subject a while back and although I don’t remember hard evidence to suggest if eating or drinking cold things excessively will absolutely cause obesity, I thought it was worth looking into. The book I’m referring to is The Hot Diet: The Real Reason You’re Gaining Weight . . . and How to Lose It Fast and Forever (Hardcover) by AJ Djo. There were some interesting facts that were hard to ignore – which may or may not just be coincidence… the most interesting one to me being that we, in America [US and Canada] use ice in almost every cold beverage we drink, all day long. The rest of the world doesn’t and we happen to be the ‘fattest’ people on the planet. 

Supposedly, when you have an ice-cold drink with a meal, it can actually numb your stomach enough that it may delay the satiety signal, causing you to eat more than you would if you were drinking a room-temp or hot beverage. I remember hearing the story that that’s why restaurants always keep your ice water glass full – to get you to eat more. Then there’s the fact that if a meal isn’t hot, it comes out of the fridge, ice cold – salads, fruits, dairy, etc., but in most other countries they don’t refrigerate produce and they eat non-hot meals at room temperature instead of ice cold. 

I’m sure ice cold anything is a pretty big shock to the system and can cause your body to use extra calories to regulate itself – which you would think would make you thinner. But if you’re hungry, it’s because your brain needs fuel, and if the calories you’re taking in are going to balancing your body’s temperature, then your brain would theorhetically tell you to eat more and send out even stronger hunger signals, which could maybe lead to overeating…

I didn’t grow up using a lot of ice – I actually do remember preferring my water at room temp, but after getting a water cooler for my 2nd apartment [the water was horrible], It was either freezing cold or piping hot and combining the two never occurred to me. I got used to drinking ice cold water – and ironically, or coincidentally it was around the time I started to gain weight. First desk job and no more horseback riding and manual labor might have had something to do with it too… but, I’ll take any help I can get, so I don’t use ice anymore, and I let my salads, etc. come to room temp before eating them. 

I’d be interested to see if anyone comes up with a real scientific study on this subject. I’m still looking around online to see if I can find anything. If I do, I’ll update this post…  

Bottom line, though: I find that even if it has nothing to do with weight gain, food just has more flavor when it isn’t so cold. And I personally drink a lot more water when it’s not freezing cold, so for those two reasons alone, I’ll keep being the picky customer who orders a ‘glass of water with lemon, no ice, please.’