Is swallowing improved when one eats favorite foods?: Investigations with physiological indicators

2014 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 24660031
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Exploratory Research
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Community health/Gerontological nurisng
• Research Institution: Hokkaido University
• Principal Investigator: OUCHI Junko 北海道大学, 保健科学研究院, 助教 (00571085)
• Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha): HAYASHI Yuko 北海道科学大学, 保健医療学部看護学科, 教授 (40336409)
• Project Period (FY): 2012-04-01 – 2015-03-31
• Keywords: 摂食嚥下 / 好み / 食事

Outline of Final Research Achievements

The purpose of this research was to investigate whether swallowing is improved or not when one eats his/her favorite foods. Healthy adults joined studies and consumed several foods with the same physical properties but different tastes and flavors. Parameters of swallowing were orofacial movements, swallowing latency and total eating time. The participants also evaluated how much they liked the foods served in the study. Relationships between values of those parameters and participants’ food preference were explored. In the results, no significant association among them was found. The foods were chosen in order to control their physical properties, yet they were not familiar to the participants. They seemed not to reflect their food preference well. This might have affected results of the study. In addition, to detect movement-related cortical potentials before swallowing was tried. However, it was not clearly observed.

Free Research Field

老年看護学