the focus in all these studies was mainly on unravelling the underlying mechanisms with the aim of being able to develop and/or design foods that promote earlier satiation and/ or a longer satiety response.
However,with regard to the senior population at large and their increased risk of developing malnutrition at some point, two additional research questions come to mind.
Firstly, do the age-associated losses in food perception described in Section 2 also impact on the regulation of seniors’ satiety responses,
and could they be somehow linked to a gradual, unintentional reduction in food intake and/or appetite? Secondly,could foods be designed in such a way that they could promote a certain amount of overeating in nutritionally frail seniors? Interestingly,
Interestingly,in a very recent investigation in seniors, a prolonged sensory exposure time (i.e. 150% or 200% of the habitual number of chews) was shown to reduce the postprandial pleasantness of a food, i.e. pizza rolls,
but not to affect appetite or meal size . The participants’ sensory performance was unknown. In young adults, the same intervention resulted in reduced meal size,thus illustrating the dysregulation of appetite in older age
These findings – if replicated elsewhere – suggest that seniors’ meal size might be based on habitual intake behaviour rather than on actual feelings of hunger or appetite. This hypothesis is supported by earlier studies demonstrating that the ability to control food intake is impaired among senior men