Sensory and Oral Processing Characteristics of Commonly Consumed Foods

Rationale: Oral processing behaviours (i.e. eating rate, bite size, chews per bite) play an important role in the onset of satiation and satiety and laboratory studies have shown that people who eat quickly consume more energy during an ad libitum meal. Therefore, one possible approach to control the energy intake is to encourage eating behaviour that slow the rate of calorie intake of the meal. Numerous studies that use external cues and prompts to change the eating rate (e.g. utensil, devices) have shown to produce clinically meaningful results. However, the long-term efficacy of these external manipulation to eating rate remains unclear and have difficulties in adherence. Texture led changes to oral processing behaviours therefore offer an exciting opportunity to adapt an individual's response to structure properties of the food being consumed in a way that maintains the associated eating experience and satiety from food intake.

However, no studies to date have investigated how differences food processing influence food texture characteristics and oral processing behaviour and the subsequent impact on energy intake for commonly consumed meals. The proposed study will explore the impact of food texture and oral processing characteristics on energy intake for the minimally-processed and ultra-processed foods or meals, to explore the impact of food processing on texture, oral processing and energy intakes.

Objective: The objectives of the study are to characterise the differences in sensory perception, and oral processing behaviours (i.e. eating rate, bite size, chew per bite, oral exposure time etc.) of foods and meals that differ in their degree of processing (Part 1), and to further investigate how texture-based differences in oral processing behaviour influence ad-libitum energy intake (Part 2). This study is also aimed to see how is the texture-based differences in oral processing behaviour modified by degree of food processing (i.e. un-, minimally-processed, processed and ultra-processed foods) (Part 2).

Study design: Part 1) Randomised non-blinded feeding trial where participants taste up to 48 food items over 3 test sessions; Part 2) 2x2 randomised crossover design where participants receive 4 treatments (i.e. 4 test meals) over 4 test sessions

Study population: Healthy females and males (n=30 for Part 1; n=50 for Part 2) aged 21-50 years with BMI between 18-25 kg/m2

Intervention: Part 1) Participants will taste and evaluate up to 48 food items over 3 sessions in randomised order. Session 1 involves tasting of up to 16 food items and computer task to rate and evaluate their perception and health behaviour. Sessions 2-4 involve evaluation of sensory characteristics, video-recordings of participants eating, and wrist worn accelerometer to track wrist movement while tasting up to 48 food items.