Dieuwerke Bolhuis, researcher at Wageningen Food & Biobased Research, conducted an experiment in which she studied people’s eating behavior when eating bread. She notes that the form in which bread is presented determines the amount of toppings that people use. She published about the research in the scientific journal Food Quality and Preference.
Bolhuis asked participants to come to her laboratory for breakfast three times. There they were given three different bread products to eat: sandwiches, large or small buns. The toppings offered were always the same and consisted of jam, syrup, egg salad and cream cheese with a comparable calorie density. The participants were allowed to choose which topping they wanted to spread on the bread products and they could eat as much as they wanted.
The researcher mapped out for each bread product how much bread and toppings the subjects ate and also how quickly they ate. The participants spread 36% more toppings on a sandwich compared to a small sandwich. The spreadable surface of a sandwich was approximately three times as large, while the weight of the bread products was almost the same: 36 and 34 grams. This confirms what was assumed that more surface area leads to the use of more toppings.
Yet, at the end of each breakfast, the subjects had always consumed the same number of grams and calories, but in different proportions of bread versus spreads and different proportions of macronutrients. The researcher notes that by changing the form of a food product that is eaten with sauce or toppings, it is possible to unconsciously increase or decrease the intake of the high-calorie toppings. The challenge is to make food products with structures that are tasty, but at the same time people do not eat too much of them.
More information can be found in the publication ‘Bread buns or slices? variations of bread shape modifies ad libitum intake of bread and toppings‘ in Food Quality and Preference.
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2024-02-28 20:07:11
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