Reformulation and development of multi-component food-items for healthy and sustainable eating behaviours

Other investigators

To be announced.

Description

Multi-component food items (MCFI) are single food products with sensorially distinguishable components, often brought together via processing. Despite their apparent ubiquity, there is little research on how MCFI impact eating behaviour. To overcome the methodological challenges of this research area, we previously assembled a multi-disciplinary team to develop and validate a sweet and savoury isocaloric test food set that contained a MCFI, a control ‘plain’ food item and a control ‘blended’ food item. These test food sets were then used in a proof-of-concept food intake study (N = 42) that showed, in line with our hypothesis, greater food intake for the MCFI compared to the plain food item and the blended food item. The current project extends this work in three ways: firstly, the completion of a fully-powered version of the proof-of concept food intake study. Secondly, a mechanistic study comparing MCFI compared to control foods. Thirdly, a consumer psychology approach that considers how MCFI effects can be leveraged to contribute to a healthy and sustainable food system via the modification of components.

Project keywords

(1) Multi-component food items (2) Multi-disciplinary (3) Food variety (4) Flavour complexity

Outputs

To be announced.

Email contact

L.L.Wilkinson@swansea.ac.uk