Location: Food Components and Health Laboratory
Project Number: 8040-10700-002-000-D
Project Type: In-House Appropriated
Start Date: Jan 23, 2024
End Date: Jan 22, 2029
Objective:
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.
