The Biobehavioral Impact of Diet Quality on Affect and Craving

Summary

The current study experimentally investigates whether reducing highly processed (HP) foods (defined in this study as foods high in added sugars) leads to, psychological and / or behavioral indicators of withdrawal. The following hypotheses are tested:

1. To test the hypothesis that reducing highly processed food intake will result in higher daily reports of physical (e.g. headaches), cognitive (e.g. difficulty concentrating), and affective (e.g., irritability) withdrawal symptoms).
2. To test the hypothesis that reducing highly processed food intake will result in increased negative affect (e.g., irritability, depression) as indicated by and psychological (self - reported distress ratings; daily emotion / mood reports) measures.
3. To test the hypothesis that reducing highly processed food intake will result in increased food craving as indicated by psychological (self - report craving ratings; daily craving report) measures.

All activities are completed remotely. Participants complete 4 phone appointments with a trained member of the research team. Daily questionnaires and ecological momentary assessments are completed at home between phone appointments. The initial call signs electronic consent and gets baseline measurements (questionnaires). After the initial call, participants start an active assessment period (pre / post dietary change assessments). Pre-dietary change includes at home questionnaires and ecological momentary assessments while eating a typical diet. It also includes the second phone appointment. Post-dietary change includes at home questionnaires and ecological momentary assessments while consuming 3 days of food portions lower in highly processed foods. Participants will complete a food journal on the remaining 2 days of post - dietary change assessment to report what food they ate. Post - dietary change also includes the third phone appointment. The second and third phone appointments each include computer tasks and questionnaires. The final phone appointment is a debriefing interview. Participants planning to continue eating a healthier diet may also be invited to complete a follow-up period, which involves answering a short questionnaire at home every other day for two weeks. 7 individuals had in-person data collected prior to the pandemic requiring a shift to virtual data collection.

Conditions

• Food Addiction
• Withdrawal

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Dietary Change (low in highly processed foods)

For post-dietary change, food is provided for 3 days (participants provide own food and do food journals the other 2 days to confirm adherence). University of Michigan's Nutrition Obesity Research Center (NORC)'s Metabolic Kitchen prepares the food. Low HP food diet is based on prior methods where participants are placed on an isocaloric diet composed of 5% or less of calories from added sugar and 10% or less of overall calories from total sugar. No foods that meet the criteria for a HP food (defined by Kant and colleagues) that corresponds to: sweeteners (sugar, candy, etc); carbonated and non-carbonated beverages (fruit drinks, sweetened / diet beverages, etc.); baked / dairy desserts (cookies, ice cream, etc.); salted snacks (potato chips, etc.) and fast foods (pizza, cheeseburgers, etc.) are included in diet portions. The overall macro nutrient composition of the diet will be approximately 20-25% of kcal from protein, 30-35% of kcal from fat, and 40-50% of kcal from carbohydrates.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• University of Michigan

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Ashley Gearhardt, Ph.D · University of Michigan

Study Design

Allocation

NA

Purpose

BASIC_SCIENCE

Masking

NONE

Model

SINGLE_GROUP

Eligibility

Min Age

25 Years

Max Age

40 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2019-06-18

Primary Completion

2021-10-21

Completion

2021-10-21

Countries

• United States

Study Locations