Culinary Medicine to Enhance Protein Intake on Muscle Quality in Older Adults

Texas Tech University

Status: Completed

Conditions: Sarcopenia

Treatments: Behavioral: Culinary Medicine; Behavioral: Control

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT05593978

Muscle Culinary Medicine

Details and patient eligibility

About

Aging is associated with a decline in muscle mass, strength, and physical function, leading to muscle mass loss and weakness. These concerns can impact an individual's functional independence and quality of life (QOL). Dietary protein stimulates muscle protein growth. Current studies suggest that optimal protein intake for older adults is greater than the Recommended Dietary Allowance. Barriers to consuming protein-rich foods in older adults include reductions in taste and smell, dentition, dexterity, and changes in living situation. Therefore, nutritional interventions are needed to effectively improve eating behaviors, diet quality, and stimulate muscle growth and strength. These interventions will help prevent, manage, and promote muscle mass loss recovery. Older adults may not be aware of their changing nutrient needs and therefore may lack the skills to prepare nutritionally adequate foods properly. Cooking demonstrations, or culinary medicine (CM), can help teach healthy cooking to reduce potential red meat consumption barriers and improve community-dwelling older adults' dietary habits. Thus, CM can be a novel strategy to improve diet quality in older adults and promote and augment at-home cooking. CM is an evidenced-base field that combines skills of preparing, cooking, and presenting food with the science of medicine. This field can help to accomplish potential eating behaviors and health outcome improvements. A tailored CM program can be an effective strategy that could reduce barriers in protein intake that will enable older adults to age well and productively.

Enrollment: 56 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 65+ years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• 65 years and older
• physically active
• able to cook for oneself
• willing to complete two blood draws

Exclusion criteria

• <65 years old
• sedentary lifestyle
• bleeding disorder
• heart pacemaker
• type 1 diabetics and type 2 diabetics taking insulin
• current smokers
• amputees

Trial design

Primary purpose: Prevention

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

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56 participants in 2 patient groups

Culinary Medicine

Experimental group

Description:

Those in this group will receive culinary medicine, which includes cooking videos and educational videos to help educate on ways to increase protein intake through lean ground beef.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Culinary Medicine

Control

Other group

Description:

This group will only receive recipes containing lean ground beef to help increase protein intake.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Control