Improvement in Laboratory Eating Behavior at the Microstructural Level of Bites by Young Women with Overweight and Obesity

Objectives Effective weight management interventions that target within-meal eating behaviors, such as biting, chewing, swallowing, and pausing, are limited. The Eating Pace Instructional Classes (EPIC) intervention successfully coached healthy young-adult females with overweight and obesity to eat slower by modifying their within-meal eating behaviors. It was hypothesized that the experimental group who received the 5-week EPIC intervention would reduce bite frequency, bite size, and bite number more than the non-treatment control group. Methods This was a secondary data analysis of mixed-macronutrient ad libitum meals eaten over a universal eating monitor (UEM) in the laboratory, before (PRE) and after (POST) the intervention. A total of 82 meals was analyzed: PRE and POST meals for each experimental participant (E: n = 21, mean age 20.2 ± 3.1 years, mean BMI 30.9 ± 2.1 kg/m2) and each control participant (C: n = 20, mean age 21.4 ± 4.7 years, mean BMI 31.7 ± 2.8 kg/m2). A manual approach was created from pilot work and calculated bite outcomes from UEM data during scale stability, using the range of 1–31 grams for a bite of food and other specific criteria. From this manual method, we developed bite analysis software in MatLab that calculated bite frequency, bite size, and bite number for each meal. Results Repeated-measures analysis of variance indicated a significant time-by-group effect for mean bite frequency (E: −0.75 ± 0.39, C: +0.18 ± 0.42 bites/minute; P = 0.025, ηp2 = 0.123), but changes in mean bite size (E: −0.50 ± 0.04, C: +0.68 ± 1.06 grams; P = 0.254, ηp2 = 0.033) and mean bite number (E: +2.57 ± 6.66, C: +2.45 ± 2.94 bites; P = 0.974, ηp2 = 0.000) did not reach significance. Conclusions The EPIC intervention that reduced the overall eating rate of women who were overweight and obese effectively decreased bite frequency. There was a trend towards smaller bite size, and bite number did not change significantly. These promising results support the incorporation of the EPIC approach and our microstructural methodology into the design and assessment of weight management interventions that modify within-meal eating behaviors. Funding Sources The randomized controlled EPIC Study, the basis for this secondary data analysis, was funded by a University of Rhode Island College of the Environment and Life Sciences (CELS) Community Access to Research and Extension Services (CARES) grant.