Acute Intervention to Assess the Impact of Practical Strategies for Healthy Eating

Summary

Obesity has reached epidemic proportions globally, alongside its associated comorbidities including cardiovascular diseases, diabetes and cancer. Effective weight management strategies are thus paramount to improve the population´s health. One of the key causes of obesity lies in excessive energy consumption derived from eating too large portions of food. In this context, practical tools to control portion size represent a promising, cost-effective strategy.

This study will investigate whether using an optimized portion-control toolkit to consume a meal under controlled laboratory conditions has a positive effect on the nutritional quality of the meal as well as any benefits in physiological, cognitive, affective and behavioural outcomes.

The study will involve 40 volunteers with overweight or obesity who will attend two lunch sessions at the Center for Nutrition Research of the University of Navarra (Spain) on two different days. At each session, participants will be invited to self-serve and eat a lunch from a cold buffet. On day one, participants will self-serve and season their food using control tools (conventional kitchen serving spoons and oil dispenser). On day two, participants will self-serve the same foods as on day one but using experimental tools (calibrated portion-control serving spoons and calibrated oil dispenser). A set of cognitive tests will be completed before, during and after the meal.

Conventional and experimental tools will be compared in terms of the following variables: meal portion size and energy density, cognitive effort while serving food, cephalic and intestinal satiety responses, appetite sensations, energy adjustment post-meal, awareness of the quantities of the previously consumed foods and recalibration of portion size norms. Additionally, the study will explore acceptance for and intention to use the optimized portion control toolkit, as well as intention to change eating habits.

It is expected that the findings from this study will shed light into the cognitive and physiological processes associated with portion control. It may also help to explain individual variations in the responses to obesogenic environments, which will hopefully lead to improved personalized interventions.

Conditions

• Overweight and Obesity
• Healthy Diet

Interventions

DEVICE

Standard serving utensil toolkit

Serving a meal using standard kitchen utensils (100% of subjects experiment with these tools first)

DEVICE

Optimsed portion-control toolkit

Serving a meal using optimised, portion-control utensils (100% of subjects experiment with these tools second)

Sponsors & Collaborators

• University of Bristol

  collaborator OTHER

• University of Roma La Sapienza

  collaborator OTHER

• Clinica Universidad de Navarra, Universidad de Navarra

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Eva Almiron-Roig, PhD · University of Navarra

Study Design

Allocation

NON_RANDOMIZED

Purpose

PREVENTION

Masking

SINGLE

Model

CROSSOVER

Eligibility

Min Age

18 Years

Max Age

65 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2022-11-09

Primary Completion

2023-06-12

Completion

2023-06-16

Countries

• Spain

Study Locations