Sukalmena InAge: Nutritional-culinary Programme to Promote Adherence to a Healthy Dietary Pattern.

Basque Culinary Center Fundazioa

Status: Completed

Conditions: Cognitive Impairment; Obesity; Healthy Aging

Treatments: Behavioral: Mediterranean diet-based culinary intervention; Behavioral: Mediterranean diet-based nutritional education intervention

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT04908163

PI2021067

Details and patient eligibility

About

Currently, one of the main health challenges of public health is to improve the quality of life of people with chronic non-communicable diseases, through new strategies that promote healthy eating habits and lifestyles.

Within the new strategies that aim to promote and improve the eating habits of the population, "Sukalmena-InAge" is proposed as a tool for transforming health, where culinary skills and nutritional knowledge converge as a new paradigm to promote health. The merging of culinary knowledge and nutritional education has been coined under the term Culinary Medicine.

The present project is presented as an innovative strategy to improve dietary habits of overweight/obese people. To this end, volunteers will participate in an intervention that will be based on cooking workshops and nutritional education. In this sense, participants will receive different cooking and nutritional education sessions in order to be able to give them resources to cook in an easy, enjoyable and healthy way.

The study will evaluate the effect that this nutritional-culinary intervention programme might exert on health and will compare these results with the effects obtained providing a more traditional nutritional education.

The potential effects will be evaluated through the measurement of specific biochemical parameters related to the most prevalent chronic diseases ( insulin, glucose, total cholesterol, triglycerides, among others). In addition, the measurement of advanced glycation end products (AGEs) in tissue will be carried out. High consumption of AGEs, could induce negative effects on health and has been correlated with the type of food consumed, but also with the culinary techniques used for their preparation.

Full description

Lifestyle interventions are nowadays focused on promoting health and preventing chronic diseases. However, when it comes to changing lifestyle habits, and more specifically, dietary habits, the acquisition and maintenance of these modifications over time is often complex due to many factors that may affect.

There is a consensus among health professionals that, based on the available scientific evidence, a diet based on a high consumption of fruit and vegetables is inversely associated with the risk of developing chronic non-communicable diseases and, overall, with lower mortality rates. These protective effects might be in part due to certain nutrients present in the mentioned foods, namely biologically active compounds or bioactive compounds, such as mono- and polyunsaturated fatty acids, fibre, phytochemicals, antioxidant vitamins, minerals, ω-3 fatty acids and plant proteins. These compounds exert antiinflammatory and antioxidant effects, thus, as part of a healthy dietary pattern, they may have the capacity to preserve healthy ageing, for instance, in relation to cognitive status.

Nevertheless, the role of culinary methods from a healthy dietary perspective should not be forgotten. During culinary processes the nutrient content can be modified, contributing not only to the loss or enhancement of beneficial nutrients such as biologically active components (CBAs), but also to the formation of compounds that might be harmful or toxic for the human organism, for example, Advanced Glycation End Products (AGEs).

Taking this into consideration, this study seeks to develop a pilot study to analyse the feasibility and preliminary efficacy of a nutritional-culinary programme aiming to promote long-term healthy ageing in overweight or obese adults. Volunteers participating in the intervention will receive nutritional recommendations based on a healthy dietary pattern such as Mediterranean Diet, together with a culinary training, seeking to empower them in cooking techniques and culinary capacities.

In conclusion, this study aims to evaluate the effectiveness of a nutritional-culinary intervention to produce beneficial effects on health parameters of overweight/obese patients and to compare the results obtained with the health effects obtained through a nutritional intervention without a culinary training.

Enrollment: 56 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 55 to 70 years old

Volunteers: No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• Overweight or obesity (BMI between 25 and 35 kg/m2)
• Low score in the screening questionaire "Homecooking Quality Index" (HQI)

Exclusion criteria

• Pregnant or lactating women.
• Serious medical condition precluding dietary intervention or limiting survival to less than one year.
• Illicit drug use, chronic alcoholism.
• Participation in any clinical trial with drugs or dietary intervention during the year prior to inclusion.
• Weight loss intervention (surgical treatment, dietary or pharmacological treatment) during the last year
• Difficulty or major drawbacks to change dietary habits and follow Mediterranean diet (allergies, intolerances).

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

Nutritional education group (NEG)

Active Comparator group

Description:

Participants in the nutritional education group will be given a leaflet with written nutrition educational information to follow a Mediterranean diet. Participants will be encouraged to adhere to this diet for one month. Four visits will be scheduled for participants assigned to this group: (1) before randomization (T1); (2) after randomization and before the the beginning of the intervention (T2); and (3) (4) after the intervention (T3)(T4). In all time-points, questionnaires will be registered and at T2 and T4 blood samples will be collected and advanced glycation end-products will be measured.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Mediterranean diet-based nutritional education intervention

Culinary intervention group (CIG)

Experimental group

Description:

Participants assigned to the culinary intervention group will receive a written nutrition educational information as well as eight online nutritional and cooking classes during the one-month intervention period. Four visits will be scheduled for participants assigned to this group: (1) before randomization (T1); (2) after randomization and before the the beginning of the intervention (T2); and (3) (4) after the intervention (T3)(T4). In all time-points, questionnaires will be registered and at T2 and T4 blood samples will be collected and advanced glycation end-products will be measured. Participants will receive 8 culinary workshops between visit 2 and visit 3. In all time-points, questionnaires will be registered and at T2 and T4 blood samples will be collected and advanced glycation end-products will be measured. Volunteers will be also contacted by phone after 6 months of the end of the intervention to collect information about food and culinary habits.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Mediterranean diet-based culinary intervention