I've heard about this. New studies are showing diet drinks could make you hungrier, because your brain believes the drink should contain calories, and when it does not, the body craves more. Though the principle behind the Shangri-La diet is a bit different.

The diet creator claims it's not the sweetness, but flavor mixed with the sugar that is makes your brain want to ingest more. The diet says if you ingest flavorless oil or drink a small amount of sugar water periodically throughout the day your brain will associate calories with flavorless foods, and so you won't want to gorge. Really weird stuff. Good post.

Food Reward in the Absence of Taste Receptor Signaling

Neuron, Volume 58, Issue 2, 24 April 2008, Page 295
Ivan E. de Araujo, Albino J. Oliveira-Maia, Tatyana D. Sotnikova, Raul R. Gainetdinov, Marc G. Caron, Miguel A.L. Nicolelis and Sidney A. Simon


Summary

Food palatability and hedonic value play central roles in nutrient intake. However, postingestive effects can influence food preferences independently of palatability, although the neurobiological bases of such mechanisms remain poorly understood. Of central interest is whether the same brain reward circuitry that is responsive to palatable rewards also encodes metabolic value independently of taste signaling. Here we show that trpm5−/− mice, which lack the cellular machinery required for sweet taste transduction, can develop a robust preference for sucrose solutions based solely on caloric content. Sucrose intake induced dopamine release in the ventral striatum of these sweet-blind mice, a pattern usually associated with receipt of palatable rewards. Furthermore, single neurons in this same ventral striatal region showed increased sensitivity to caloric intake even in the absence of gustatory inputs. Our findings suggest that calorie-rich nutrients can directly influence brain reward circuits that control food intake independently of palatability or functional taste transduction.

Full Article (Subscription only):

http://preview.tinyurl.com/57pgmn

*bad hypnosis. Satisfaction is mostly mental. Hunger is physical, appetite is not. People are fat because they confuse appetite with hunger and so the mechanism to STOP EATING is not received. Meanwhile, most obesity is not necessarily the result of overeating, but rather an overdeveloped appetite for the WRONG nutrients. (The paradox of the obese person starving for real nutrition, and eating only junk food.)