Dr Gourmet had an interesting post in his newsletter recently.  He cited a study that compared whether eating an oatmeal cookie, an apple or a pear influenced weight loss.  The gist of the article was that calorie content was controlled so that the only variable was the cookie the apple or the pear.  Although calorie intake was identical, the women who ate the fruit lost weight while the women who ate the cookie gained weight.  Along these lines, I've been reading an interesting book titled The Volumetrics Weight-Control Plan by Barbara Rolls, PhD and Robert A. Barnett.  This book also looks at the density of food we eat and encourages us to shift our eating habits to include more low-energy-dense foods.  Although the study cited by Dr. Gourmet was a small sample, it does give food for thought...and that food should preferably be an apple.