Volumetrics
What it is
Less a diet than a way of choosing: prefer foods with fewer calories per gram — vegetables, fruit, soups, legumes, lean protein, foods with a lot of water and fibre in them — so that the usual amount of food carries less energy. The idea is that people eat a fairly consistent weight of food each day, and that lowering what each gram contains lowers the day without shrinking the plate.
How it works in practice
Soup or salad before the main course; vegetables as half the plate; fruit instead of juice; stews and dishes cooked with water rather than fried; less oil, cheese, pastry and processed snacks, which are the densest things in most kitchens. Nothing is forbidden; the dense foods are simply pushed to the edge of the plate rather than the centre.
What the evidence shows
The mechanism is among the best documented in the field: in laboratory studies where the energy density of meals is varied while portions stay the same, people eat a similar weight of food and take in less energy — and report the same fullness. The source for this on the site is a narrative review by the researcher who built the concept, which is honest about its own limits: the strongest evidence is for intake within meals and days, and the evidence for long-term weight maintenance on the pattern is thinner. No twelve-month weight figure exists in the registry, and this page does not invent one.
Who it tends to suit
People whose obstacle is hunger and volume — who need the plate to look full; people who like soups, vegetables and fruit; families, since nothing is excluded and the dense dishes stay on the table in smaller amounts.
How it most often fails
By assuming "low density" means "eat as much as you like": nuts, oil and cheese on a salad make it dense again, and a large volume of low-density food still adds up. And by protein, which a plate of vegetables and fruit does not carry — lean protein has to be placed deliberately.
What to watch
Protein and essential fats, which a very low-density day can miss; total intake, still; and the dense additions — dressings, cheese, nuts — that quietly change the arithmetic.
In the app
Energy density is not a policy the app verifies. The generated menus are energy- and macro-checked, and listing vegetables, soups and fruit among your preferred foods expresses the pattern within them; the hunger page is where its levers are set out.