A low-energy dense dietary pattern: a narrative review
Date
2021
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Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
A low-energy dense dietary pattern is promoted throughout dietary recommendations for the purpose of promoting diet quality and overall health. However, little work has identified effective approaches for achieving a low-energy dense diet, making the implementation of dietary recommendations challenging. The purpose of this thesis project was to conduct a narrative review to examine energy density used within extant literature. The narrative review aims to examine the approaches used to implement a low-energy dense dietary pattern within dietary interventions while describing the success of the intervention and how a low-energy dense dietary pattern compares to other dietary strategies in improving dietary and health outcomes. The narrative review underscores the work of basic feeding studies and observational research which have demonstrated that a diet low in energy density is associated with a reduced energy intake and positive health outcomes. Ten dietary intervention studies with the explicit goal of altering participant dietary energy density were reviewed and the impact the intervention had on dietary energy density, diet quality, energy intake, and weight were described. Implementation of a low-energy dense diet was accomplished through two different approaches; modifying the consumption of food/nutrient groups that impact energy density or applying one of various proposed energy density classification methods. Across interventions, consuming a low-energy dense dietary pattern had similar results compared to other dietary intervention strategies in regard to impact on the reviewed health outcomes. Interventions that used an energy density classification method to implement a low- energy dense dietary pattern appeared to have more consistency across studies in regard to reducing participant dietary energy density, diet quality, energy intake, and weight management when compared to the approach of modifying the consumption of food/nutrient groups that impact energy density.
Description
Keywords
Low-energy dense dietary pattern, Low-energy dense diet, Dietary recommendations, Health outcomes, Energy density