Digestion-based meal design for people living with obesity: Taking the in vitro - in silico - in vivo challenge

Obesity is a steeply rising public health problem requiring effective intervention. This project aims to address this issue by developing digestion-based, satiating meals that meet the altered dietary needs of people with obesity. Building on process-structure-digestive function relations of foods, I will move towards the evaluation of meals with distinct microstructural organization of macronutrients, focusing on starch. Specifically, lentils as a source of macronutrients and tomatoes will be combined into distinctly structured meals by targeted processing, enabling the fundamental study of interaction effects between meal co-ingested nutrients and meal constituents. A key step forward is the development of a new, semi-dynamic in vitro digestion protocol representing the recently characterized digestive tract of people with obesity. Moreover, the project focuses on establishing a deeper understanding of the meaning of in vitro macronutrient digestion kinetics by combining in vitro with in silico and in vivo approaches. An in silico model will be gradually developed to translate in vitro digestion data (starch hydrolysis) into predicted in vivo outcomes (blood sugar levels). Moreover, insights obtained in vitro and in silico will be validated with in vivo data (blood glucose and satiety) obtained upon meal consumption. This project will develop a deep understanding of how meal structuring can be applied to steer physiological responses in people with obesity.