Patent: Composition for Reducing Food Intake

Life is a balancing act that takes us through difficulties, solves problems and keeps us afloat. Failing to manage these balancing acts can jeopardize our lives and put us in a turmoil. Likewise, a healthy body weight is also a balance between calories consumed and calories expelled. But to lose weight we need to create calorie deficits-burn more calories than we consume. This is vastly achieved through regular physical activity and diet interventions.

Enhancing satiety and preventing absorption are two major ways to block intake of excess foods and control appetite. The physical, chemical and sensory characteristics of the food that we eat determine our satiety state. These signals also strongly impact our time gap between two meals, portion sizes and the time taken to eat a meal. So, it is possible to use these signals to improvise appetite response to the food that we eat and hence, reduce caloric intake.

Portion sizes play a major role in helping us reduce total calorie consumption and lose weight eventually. In extremely obese patients such regular practices often don’t yield glorious results. They are subjected to surgeries which also don’t prove to be successful many times. But, in the case of overweight individuals there is the possibility to alter diet practices and bring in effective changes in overall weight. There is a plethora of weight loss pills, supplements and more marketed to people favoring weight loss without side effects. But these don’t bring in optimal results nor are they healthy. The invention discussed in the patent ‘Composition for Reducing Food Intake’ is all about a herbal extract formulation that delays gastric emptying, reduces the time to perceived gastric fullness and was successful in bringing about weight loss in overweight patients over 45 days. The research is even better in the sense that a combination of this herbal extract and dietary fiber induced decreased food intake compared to the use of either alone.

The invention patented is an excellent one as obesity exists as a worldwide epidemic leading to several health consequences and debilitating side effects. The key element here is that the extract is not a meal replacement but only an appetite suppressant. A great appetite is a troublemaker as it ensures a definite increase in consumption rate but an appetite suppressant helps to decrease the desire for increased food intake. The composition of the invention is provided as a component of a normal meal in the form of a dietary supplement, health drink, snack, nutrient-fortified beverage, pill, tablet or soft gel. This extract is also nutritionally complete containing vitamins, minerals, nitrogen, carbohydrates and fatty acids acting as the single source of nutrition fulfilling daily nutrient requirements. The composition can be consumed in the form of a biscuit, cereal, muesli, candy, confectionary, cookie or an energy bar. While the extract is suitable for anyone the frequency and quantity recommended depends on the individual’s degree of excess weight.

The researchers recommend using this invention on subjects who are obliged to lose weight (as in the case of obese/overweight people) or those who control food intake or skip meals to avoid weight gain. In other words, the extract is generally only given to those people who have a BMI equal to or greater than 30.
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The patent was originally published on Jan 6th 2011 and is available in many of the world-renowned authentic government patent databases which you can access anytime for a complete understanding of the invention. The links are given here for your convenience.

United States Patent & Trademark Office: http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-bool.html&r=29&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PTXT&s1=nutrition&s2=humans&OS=nutrition+AND+humans&RS=nutrition+AND+humans

European Patent Organization: https://worldwide.espacenet.com/publicationDetails/originalDocument?FT=D&date=20110106&DB=&locale=en_EP&CC=CA&NR=2766095A1&KC=A1&ND=7
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World Intellectual Property Organization: https://patentscope.wipo.int/search/en/detail.jsf?docId=US210407582&tab=NATIONALBIBLIO&office=&prevFilter=&sortOption=Pub+Date+Desc&queryString=FP%3A%28composition+for+reducing+food+intake%29&recNum=13&maxRec=130