Comparison of Pulse Chips and Commercial Snacks on Food Intake, Appetite and Blood Glucose in Healthy Young Adults

Consumers are often forced to eat fast, convenient foods and snacks ("eat on the go") in order to match the pace of their lifestyles. However, these snack options more often than not offer little health benefit to the consumer. In fact, 55% of calories consumed by Canadians are ultra processed foods, which are limited in their nutrient profile and only offer empty calories. Subsequently, these foods lead the consumer to eat more and provides little to no feelings of satiety or satiation. the proposed objectives of the current project are to examine the physiological benefit(s) of consuming readily available pulse snacks and compare them to other commonly consumed snack varieties. This work aims to incentivize consumers to seek out pulses as valuable snacking options and highlight the benefit of including these as alternatives to other energy-dense snacks that lack the nutritional composition of pulses.

Hypothesis of the study: Inclusion of pulses as part of a snack will lower appetite and post-prandial glycemia (PPG) in comparison to commercial, commonly consumed non-pulse snacks. Overall Objective of the study: To investigate and compare the effects of pulse and non-pulse snacks served as chips and dip on appetite and PPG in healthy adults. Specific objectives of the study: To test the acute effects of different pulse snacks on: 1) PPG and appetite for three hours, and 2) food intake 1 hour following consumption of snacks.