Culinary Quality and foodbased interventions: a litterature review

Introduction: Insufficient dietary intake is common among adults at risk of undernutrition. This study aims at identifying existent food-based interventions focused on culinary quality as a mean to address undernutrition.

Methods: A literature review of systematic reviews was conducted in PubMed, during spring 2017. The reference list of identified studies was screened, using the EPPI-screening-tool. Data was extracted focusing on culinary quality and food-based interventions and synthesised in a narrative format.
Results: 13 systematic reviews and 90 substudies were identified for inclusion. Some substudies exploring the effects of culinary quality as a main intervention area, reported significant results. The results consisted in part of: increased micronutrient intake following food fortification and flavour enhancement; and increase in mean energy and macronutrient intake and MNA-score, following a “Familystyle meal program”. Despite these results the overall effects on the nutritional status of the participants was not consistent.

Discussion: A majority of the identified studies consisted of multicomponent and cross-disciplinary meal-time interventions. Thus few interventions solely withdrew culinary quality as their main intervention focus. This challenges the data-extraction process and the validity of the summarization of this data.

Conclusions: This review found some significant results on dietary intake, which can be attributed to food–based interventions focused on culinary quality. However, no overall consistency in the evidence supporting an unambiguous correlation between culinary quality and the reduction of undernutrition was identified. Further high quality studies in the effects of such food-based interventions are required to provide reliable evidence. Furthermore, the review shed light on a need to define the term ˈculinary qualityˈ for future intervention purposes.