THERE are more than 127m overweight adults in the United States. That is big.

In Britain, 46% of men and 32% of women are overweight and the figures are getting fatter across the western world where obesity is reaching epidemic proportions; and yet more people than ever are on a diet.

The obesity paradox has created a huge business for the food industry, which has made billions selling “low-fat” and “low-carb” products to would-be slimmers.

Now they are aiming their considerable marketing muscle at a new food fad — “satiety”.

Danone, General Mills, Unilever — all the major food companies are putting their weight behind a word that most people find difficult to say, let alone spell correctly.

Satiety (it rhymes with society) is the state of feeling full and gratified to the point of satisfaction. It is not a feeling usually associated with weight loss. But food scientists argue that is exactly the problem for most dieters. Having denied themselves all day, weight watchers tend to blow it by overeating. Hunger is the dieters’ worst enemy.

“Just because you’re on a diet, it doesn’t mean you can’t snack. In fact, eating between meals is vital to weight loss because regular eating is key to your success,” is the claim made by Unilever’s Slim Fast website.

Its aim is to produce snacks that can be used to curb appetites between meals and reduce hunger at meal times.

Each manufacturer has its own solution, but in general satiety products rely on fibre and protein to generate the feeling of satisfaction while using artificial sweeteners to keep the calories down.

Snack-food manufacturers used to boast that their products would not fill you up between meals. Milky Way and Cadbury’s Finger of Fudge were between-meal indulgences that were supposed to not keep you from your three-course dinner.

The potential profits for food companies are enormous. Globally, the market for foods directly aimed at dieters is a $7.6 billion-a-year (£4 billion) business, according to Euromonitor market research.

In Britain £128m a year is spent on meal replacements, slimming tablets and slimming teas.

Simone Baroke, an analyst with EuroMonitor and a trained nutritionist, said satiety was now the hot trend for many food companies.

New products are being brought out and novel ingredients for prepared foods such as Fabuless, a “satiety agent”, made by DSM, the Dutch food- technology company.

As the success of Tate & Lyle’s sweetener, Splenda, has shown, ingredients can become brands in their own rights.

“The big food companies really decide what the next new trend will be and satiety seems to be very popular with them right now,” Baroke said.

Looking at the ingredients for Danone’s new satiety yoghurt, Shape’s Lasting Satisfaction, Baroke said the nutrionist part of her was unimpressed.

“Instead of zantham gum they are using guar gum.”

Guar gum is derived from the Indian cluster bean cyamopsis tetragonolobus, according to Danone’s website.

“Guar gum is supposed to give you a feeling of satisfaction, but a gram isn’t going to make a big difference,” said Baroke.

But the marketing, she said, was clever.

“For someone trying to lose weight ‘lasting satisfaction’ is a very potent promise.”

“Satiety”, however, was nothing new, she said.

“In the 1980s there were a lot of high-fibre products making the same claim,” she said. “New terms come along but these are not new ideas. These things are cyclical,” she said.

Lara Jackle, chief executive of LightFull, a California-based food company, said the ideas behind satiety met a real need.

“It’s a funny word,” said Jackle. “Even if people don’t know it, I think they understand what it is.

“Women in particular like to snack. All the evidence shows smaller, lighter meals are the healthier way to eat.”

LightFull was launched in the US in January, and is already in more than 1,000 supermarkets in the US and sold via Amazon in Britain.

Before setting up LightFull, Jackle helped to build Balance Bar, a nutrition-bar company, bought by Kraft for $268m in 2000.

“By 2010, half the children in America will be overweight if the current trend continues,” said Jackle. “Americans are just out of control on portions.”

LightFull emphasises its natural ingredients and its food counts as one point on Weight Watchers, good news for dieters and particularly good news for Jackle. There are 8m Weight Watchers members in the US.

The last big food trend to sweep the world was the Atkins diet. The low-carb, high-protein diet devised by the late Dr Robert Atkins almost became a religion in the US. Bread sales slid and doughnut manufacturer Krispy Kreme blamed the trend for falling profits.

Sales of Atkins and low-carb products have fallen sharply. But with the world’s appetite for slimming solutions still unsatisfied, there’s always room for more.