Ghrelin predicts food consumption up to three hours prior to eating: A randomised controlled trial

What Was Tested

This randomized controlled trial paper looks at Ghrelin.

Eating triggers a cascade of metabolic, neural, and subjective signals that unfold and interact over several hours, typically suppressing the motivation to eat until the next meal.

Which of these signals predict next-meal intake is not well understood.

Who Took Part

PubMed tags the participants as both men and women.

How the Study Was Run

The researchers set it up as a randomized, double-blind and crossover study.

Because people in this Ghrelin study were split into groups at random, differences between the groups are less likely to reflect who happened to join each one.

Neither the participants nor the staff measuring them knew who was on Ghrelin, so expectations could not easily colour the readings.

Each person switched between Ghrelin and the comparison at some point, usually with a gap in between.

What Was Measured

In a cross-over, double-blinded, and repeated measures factorial design over four separate test days, the researchers manipulated both the protein and caloric content of four preload meals to experimentally induce differences in satiety.

Bayesian analysis revealed an extreme level of evidence for the inclusion of the peptide hormone ghrelin as a predictor of next meal energy intake.

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Ghrelin, Eating, Glucagon-Like Peptide 1 and Energy Intake.

The authors tagged it with the keywords Appetite suppression, Food intake, Hunger and Satiety.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and crossover study of Ghrelin.

The publication is from 2026 (Metabolism: clinical and experimental), a journal based in United States.

More context: the Ghrelin compound page, all human trials.