Serving a dip with a salty snack promotes energy intake

During eating, exogenous sources of oral lubrication like dips facilitate oral processing, which has been shown to influence food intake. However, few studies have directly assessed how exogenous oral lubrication (via added dip) affects acute intake, especially while snacking. In two laboratory visits, adults (n = 46, 74 % female) were served 70 g of ranch-flavored chips (2.5 servings) with or without 95 g of energy-matched ranch dip, and ad libitum intake was measured. All sessions were video recorded and annotated for number of bites and active eating time (min), which were used to calculate measures of eating microstructure, including eating rate (g/min) and bite size (g/bite). The chips + dip condition yielded 77 % greater intake (64.3 ± 16.2 g versus 36.4 ± 16.2 g; 344.6 ± 86.8 kcal versus 195.1 ± 86.8 kcal; p < 0.001) and a faster total eating rate (p < 0.001) relative to the no-dip control, despite lower initial liking of the dip condition (p = 0.002). However, there was no difference in chip intake (p = 0.83) or chip eating rate (p = 0.11) by condition. Thus, in this chips and dip snack, the greater intake in the dip condition may have been facilitated by a larger total snack bite size (p < 0.001) resulting from dip inclusion, as opposed to faster chip eating rate as a function of the lubricating dip.