Our math

Four things decide the score

1. Protein. The strongest and longest-acting fullness lever. Your body defends its protein target across meals and days — dilute it, and appetite pushes you to eat more of everything else.

2. Energy density. How many calories hide in each bite. 100 grams of spinach is 23 kcal; 100 grams of cookies is nearly 500. Stomach volume is a real fullness signal, and dense food defeats it.

3. Fiber. A smaller but real bonus: slows eating, slows the stomach, adds staying power.

4. Hyper-palatability. The penalty. Specific fat+salt, fat+sugar, carb+salt and pure-sugar combinations — patterns rare in nature and everywhere in engineered food — drive eating past fullness. Foods that trip these patterns lose up to 80% of their score. This is also why the very bottom of our scale is reserved for engineered food: plain fats like olive oil score low, but never lower than the products built to defeat you.

Plus three honest adjustments: calories you drink count for less than calories you chew; alcohol calories carry almost no satiety at all; and genuinely protein-rich foods can't fall to the candy tier, because protein works even in imperfect packages.

What we're sure of, and what we're not

Well-established (component level): protein increases satiety; low energy density reduces intake; fiber helps; ultra-processed, hyper-palatable food drives over-eating in controlled experiments (about +500 kcal/day in the landmark NIH inpatient trial, Hall 2019).

Our judgment (composite level): the exact weights that combine those levers into one 0–100 number are calibrated by us, not fitted to a clinical trial. We weight protein above what short-term satiety studies alone justify, because protein's appetite effect plays out over days, not the two hours a lab test measures. That is a stated scientific bet, and we flag it rather than hide it.

Known limits: scores are only as good as the underlying data (mixed and restaurant dishes swing the most); the score has an optimum, not a maximum — living on only 90+ foods is neither necessary nor sustainable. Aim for “more filling than yesterday,” not a perfect number.