Motivating Value of Vegetables Study (VegUp)

USDA Grand Forks Human Nutrition Research Center

Status

Completed

Conditions

Overweight

Obesity

Treatments

Other: Usual Vegetable Intake

Other: Recommended Vegetable Intake

Study type

Interventional

Funder types

Other

Other U.S. Federal agency

Identifiers

NCT02585102

GFHNRC099

Details and patient eligibility

About

The purpose of this study is to see if perceived barriers to vegetable consumption can be overcome by making it easier for people eat more vegetables and to see if the effects last over time.

Full description

High vegetable consumption is associated with maintenance of a healthy body weight. Americans do not eat vegetables in the amounts recommended by the dietary guidelines and interventions to increase intake have had limited results. Reported barriers to consumption include not knowing how to prepare them and being unused to eating them.To get people to eat vegetables, they have to be motivated to do so. Repeated consumption of snack foods increases overweight and obese individuals' motivation to eat snack foods. The investigators hypothesize that by increasing people's consumption of vegetables by making them easy to eat will increase the motivation value of vegetables. For this study the investigators propose to provide minimally-processed (cleaned, packaged) vegetables to overweight and obese individuals. The motivating value of vegetables will be measured using a computer task where people play a game to earn points towards portions of a vegetable or a neutral food (crackers). The investigators will determine potential moderators of the increase in the motivating value of vegetables such as genetics (single nucleotide polymorphisms) that are associated with the motivating value of food and whether people substitute eating vegetables for other foods. The investigators will also determine changes in adiposity as a result of vegetable consumption. Lastly, the investigators will determine if repeated consumption increases psychosocial predictors of vegetable intake, such as self-efficacy of eating vegetables.

Enrollment

102 patients

Sex

All

Ages

18 to 65 years old

Volunteers

Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

BMI ≥ 25 kg/m2
Currently eating ≤ 1 cup of vegetables (apart from fried potatoes) per day
Willing to consent to study conditions

Exclusion criteria

BMI < 25 kg/m2
Age < 18 years or > 65 years
Currently dieting or following specific diet
Allergies or unwillingness to consume study foods
Gastrointestinal disorder or disease
Pregnant, lactating, or planning pregnancy
Current smoker or tobacco user
High dietary restraint or certain eating patterns
Inability to give consent
Medications that would influence appetite, weight gain, or weight loss
Exclusionary medications: Didrex, Tenuate, Belviq, Contrave, Phendimetrazine, Adipex-P, Suprenza, Xenical, Qsymia, Saxenda