Sex Differences in the Effects of Repeated Taste Exposure to the Mediterranean Diet: A 6-month Follow-up Study

Abstract

A cknowledgmentsWe thank all the participants for their excellent collaboration. Methods: Thirty-eight men and 32 premenopausal women (24-53 years) were exposed to the same 4-week experimental MedDiet during which all foods were provided to participants. Participants also received some recommendations/tools to adhere to a healthy way of eating, with no other contact until the 6-month follow-up visit.Results: Compared to baseline, the Mediterranean score (MedScore) had increased at the end of the 6-month follow-up (time effect P=0.003), with no gender difference (gender-by-time interaction P=0.97). Although our intervention was not focused on body weight management, compared to baseline, BMI decreased during the intervention in both men and women (respectively P<0.0001 and P=0.03); however, only the female participants of this study managed to maintain the lower BMI, six months after the intervention (P=0.03 for women;gender-by-time interaction P=0.04).Conclusions: Exposure to the MedDiet for a short duration promotes the adherence to this food pattern in both genders and helps in the management of body weight, especially in women.

Impact of Experimentally Induced Cognitive Dietary Restraint on Eating Behavior Traits, Appetite Sensations, and Markers of Stress during Energy Restriction in Overweight/Obese Women

“…Overall, changes observed in food choices during the follow-up suggest that being exposed to a highly satiating diet along with some dietary recommendations favor the adherence to a healthier food pattern. This observation is concordant with results from a study conducted by our group in which it was shown that being exposed to a satiating Mediterranean diet in a controlled context was associated with improvement in dietary habits in the longer term [ 73 ].…”

The Information Sharing Behaviors of Dietitians and Twitter Users in the Nutrition and COVID-19 Infodemic: Content Analysis Study of Tweets

“…Comparisons of the frequencies of inaccurate and accurate mentions for each theme were also conducted using the chi-square test. The Fisher exact test was used instead of the chi-square test when at least one cell contained less than 5 data points [ 60 ]. Differences in means of likes, replies, and retweets per tweet between dietitians and the public were assessed by the nonparametric version of the t test for continuous data, that is, the Wilcoxon rank-sum test, as the data were not normally distributed and samples were independent [ 61 , 62 ].…”