Location: Food Components and Health Laboratory
2024 Annual Report
Objectives
Determine how changes in dietary food components affect taste, palatability, food choice, and health.
Approach
Characteristics of food (e.g., nutrient composition, sensory properties, palatability) influence food choice, satiety, dietary intake, and ultimately the risk of obesity and associated chronic diseases. This project plan aims to 1) determine how changes in food components affect taste, palatability, food choice, and health and 2) identify food characteristics, such as nutrient composition and sweetness, that influence ingestive behavior and diet quality. Despite recommendations to reduce sugar intake, it is barely occurring in the population. Guidance on how to best reduce and maintain sugar intake is limited. Also limited is knowledge about the role of sensory aspects of sugar reduction and how it effects sweetness and food preference. Two complementary randomized controlled trials (RCTs) will be conducted. The first RCT will focus on dietary sweetness reduction to determine how sweetness reduction (achieved through added sugar reduction) or sweetness replacement (with non-nutritive sweeteners) alters perception and liking of sweetness in model foods and beverages. T second RCT will investigate how sweetness reduction alters food choice and diet quality. The results of the planned research can provide guidance on better ways to achieve reduced sugar intake which, in turn, should improve public health.
Progress Report
This annual report is for a new project 8040-10700-002-000D entitled “Food Characteristics that Affect Ingestive Behavior and Risk of Diet-Related Chronic Diseases in Humans.” The project contributes to National Program 107 and focuses on Component 3 (Scientific Basis for Dietary Guidance), and Component 4 (Prevention of Diet-Related Chronic Diseases) through human studies focusing on characteristics of food that influence food choice, satiety, dietary intake, and ultimately the risk of obesity and associated chronic diseases. This project builds on research findings and accomplishments from the terminated project 8040-51530-011-000D entitled “Strategies to Alter Dietary Food Components and Their Effects on Food Choice and Health-Related Outcomes.”
A dietary intervention study was initiated and mostly completed to test the hypothesis that people will acclimate to a reduced sugar diet over time such that after three months on a reduced sweet (achieved by reducing added sugars) diet, people will come to perceive model foods and beverages (milk and pudding) with a fixed level of sugar as sweeter than before the reduced-sweetness intervention or come to prefer lower levels of sugar in model foods and beverages. Analysis of sensory evaluations are ongoing as are evaluation of ancillary questionnaires.
Accomplishments