SensWell - Sensory food satisfaction in promoting healthy and sustainable eating behavior

The modern Western diet contains many foods which are highly palatable, have a relatively high energy density and are low in fiber content. These foods are believed to be major contributors to the growing obesity problem. However, the replacement of the energy-dense nutrients from these foods by lower calorie alternatives may not be the optimal way of reducing the prevalence of obesity. Instead nutrient quality must be maintained and sensory aspects that give people satisfaction with the food must be increased. Satisfaction with food and sensory palatability play an important role in food choices and food intake and thus the nutritional quality of our diets. Therefore the overall objective in the SENSWELL project is to study the direct and indirect sensory dimensions that are involved in consumer satisfaction with foods and meals and how these can be utilized in contributing to healthy eating behaviors.
At the Department of Food Science, AU, we work specifically with product compositional and multisensory factors in food satiation capacity. We hypothese that satiation and satiety capacity of foods can be increased by modification of flavours and structural components. We study the modification (enhancement/suppression, flavor-flavor and flavor-nutrient paring) of the flavor and structural composition of foods on sensory properties, liking, wanting, emotional and collative properties in relation to satisfaction.