Acute Effect of Animal and Vegetable Protein Rich Meals With Comparable Dietary Fibers Content on Appetite Sensation and Energy Intake

Acute Effect of Animal and Vegetable Protein Rich Meals With Comparable Dietary Fibers Content on Appetite Sensation and Energy Intake

Background:

• New Nordic diet guidelines advocate a reduction in consumption of protein from animal sources such as beef and pork, due to environmental concerns.
• Instead, intake of protein from vegetable sources such as legumes and pulses should be increased.
• A previous study showed that a meal enriched with vegetable protein increased the subjective sensation of satiety and decreased hunger and ad libitum energy intake (EI) compared to animal protein.
• This study did, however, not document that vegetable protein per se is more satiating than animal protein as the vegetable meal had higher fiber content. Fiber is a likely confounder.
• The protein from egg is sparingly investigated in relation to appetite. Few studies have found that eggs have a high satiety index but further investigation is needed.

Objective:

- To examine if vegetable protein (beans and peas) can suppress subjective appetite (VAS and ad libitum energy intake) compared to isocaloric meals enriched with either red meat or egg with similar distribution of macronutrients and content of dietary fibers.

Design:

Single-blind randomized 4-way crossover meal study

Subjects:

33 young healthy men (Age: 18-50 years; BMI: 19-30 kg/m2). Expected completers: n=30.

End points:

1. Subjective appetite (VAS) (every 30 min for 3 hours)
2. Ad libitum EI (3 hours after lunch test meal)

Inclusion Criteria:

• Healthy
• BMI: 18.5-30.0 kg/m2
• Weight stable (within +/- 3 kg) two months prior to study inclusion,
• Non-smoking
• Nonathletic (< 10 h hard physical activity)

Exclusion Criteria:

• BMI > 30 kg/m2
• Change in smoking status
• Daily or frequent use of medication that can affect appetite
• Suffering from metabolic diseases
• Suffering from psychiatric diseases
• Suffering from any other clinical condition, which would make the subject unfit to participate in the study
• alcohol and drug abuse
• food allergies or relevance for the test meals