Understanding eating topography: The key to reducing energy intake in humans?

根据世界卫生组织的数据，自1980年以来，肥胖人数增加了一倍多。据估计，肥胖症现在影响着大约15亿人。这是令人担忧的，因为健康和经济后果非常明显。肥胖是心血管疾病、糖尿病和某些癌症的主要危险因素。 关于肥胖的一个关键观察结果是，并非每个人都会肥胖，即使他们生活在同一个社区，甚至同一个家庭。这意味着有些人似乎受到了"保护"。肥胖研究人员有兴趣了解为什么会出现这种情况，因为这种保护可能是有效治疗的关键，甚至是首先预防肥胖的方法。 长期以来，研究人员和健康专家一直怀疑肥胖与特定的饮食方式有关，特别是吃得很快。事实上，有时人们说，我们应该咀嚼我们的食物几次，以感到满意，并帮助消化。“最近，研究人员开始系统地探索这一想法。结果是惊人的。例如，在受控条件下，似乎以较慢的速度进食会增加自我报告的饱腹感和减少膳食量。此外，当我们观察整个国家的人时，我们发现进食率是体重的一个很好的预测因素，即使在大规模研究中也是如此。2010年，研究人员开始研究降低进食率的方法，看看这是否可以用来降低体重。他们的成果令人印象深刻。他们使用一种叫做mandometer的装置来鼓励孩子们以较慢的速度进食。该训练产生了具有临床意义的体重减轻，并在治疗后持续12个月。 我们可以操纵饮食行为来减少能量摄入的前景是诱人的，因为这种方法有可能成为治疗肥胖的有效方法。此外，还有机会通过操纵食物的物理特性来改变我们的饮食行为。如果这一点能够实现，那么我们就可以设计食物来鼓励行为（例如，慢吃），减少我们从一顿饭到另一顿饭的卡路里摄入。重要的是，要实现这些好处，我们需要发现潜在的机制。这是该项目的一个重要目标。 首先，我们将开发一种方法来量化和分析"进食地形"--与进食相关的行为模式，如吞咽速度、咬合大小、进食速度等。通过这种工具，我们将进行一系列实验，以确定影响我们食物摄入的进食地形的具体方面。在第二组实验中，我们将重点关注机制。将检验两个假设。首先，我们将探讨的前景之间存在因果关系的具体方面的饮食地形和饥饿和饱胀，我们在一餐结束时，在两餐之间的时间体验。这种关系可能存在的原因有两个。饮食地形可能会改变控制我们食欲的激素水平。或者，它可能会影响对一顿饭的记忆的形成-这一过程被认为会影响我们在下一顿饭中吃的食物量。 我们的第二个假设涉及与特定食物相关的饮食地形。如果一种食物是在一种让我们感到饱足的地形下吃的，那么我们可能会记住这种关系。将来，当我们再次遇到这种食物时，我们可能会期望食物更能填饱肚子，并选择更小的部分。通过这种解释，饮食地形通过改变我们在进餐前决定份量大小的方式来影响我们的能量摄入。

According to the World Heath Organisation, obesity has more than doubled since 1980. Estimates suggest that obesity now affects around 1.5 billion people. This is worrying because the health and economic consequences are very clear. Obesity is a major risk factor for cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, and some cancers. One of the key observations about obesity is that not everyone becomes obese, even when they live in the same community, or even the same family. This means that some people appear to be 'protected.' Obesity researchers are interested in understanding why this is the case because this protection may hold the key to an effective treatment, or even a way to prevent obesity in the first place. For a long time, researchers and health professionals have suspected that obesity is associated with a particular eating style, eating quickly in particular. Indeed, it is sometimes said that we should chew our food several times in order to feel satisfied and to 'aid digestion.' Recently, researchers have begun to explore this idea systematically. The results are striking. For example, under controlled conditions, it would seem that eating at a slower rate produces both an increase in self-reported fullness and a reduction in meal size. Moreover, when we look at people across an entire country, we find that eating rate is a good predictor of bodyweight, even in large-scale studies. In 2010 researchers started to look at ways to reduce eating rate to see if this might be used to lower bodyweight. Their results were impressive. They used device called a mandometer to encourage children to eat at a slower rate. This training produced a clinically significant reduction in bodyweight, which was sustained 12 months post treatment. The prospect that we can manipulate eating behaviour to reduce energy intake is tantalizing because this approach has potential as an effective treatment for obesity. Moreover, an opportunity exists to change our eating behaviour by manipulating the physical characteristics of food. If this can be achieved then we may be able to design foods to encourage behaviours (e.g., slow eating) that reduce our calorie intake from meal to meal. Importantly, for these benefits to be realised, we need to discover the underlying mechanism. This is an important objective of this project. In the first instance we will develop a method to quantify and characterise 'eating topography' - collectively, the pattern of behaviours associated with eating; swallow rate, bite size, eating rate, and so on. With this tool, we will run a series of experiments to identify specific aspects of eating topography that influence our food intake. In a second set of experiments we will focus on the mechanism. Two hypotheses will be tested. Firstly, we will explore the prospect that a causal relationship exists between specific aspects of eating topography and the hunger and fullness that we experience at the end of a meal and during the period between meals. There are two reasons why this relationship might exist. Eating topography may change levels of hormones that control our appetite. Alternatively, it may influence the formation of memory for a meal - a process that is known to influence the amount of food that we eat at a subsequent meal. Our second hypothesis relates to the eating topography that is associated with particular foods. If a food is eaten with a topography that makes us feel full then we may remember this relationship. In future, when we encounter that food again, we may expect the food to be more filling and select a smaller portion. By this account, eating topography influences our energy intake by changing the way we make decisions about portion size, before a meal begins.