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NCT06017986: PFR
The Effect of Processing on Food Reward
NA trial testing Ultra-processed food - Picture Set Meal in Metabolic Diseases in 74 participants. Currently enrolling.
1 July 2026
Quick facts
| Lead sponsor | Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University |
|---|---|
| Phase | NA |
| Status | Recruiting now |
| Study type | INTERVENTIONAL |
| Allocation | randomized |
| Design | crossover |
| Masking | single |
| Primary purpose | basic science |
| Enrollment | 74 |
| Start date | 1 July 2023 |
| Primary completion | 1 July 2026 |
| Estimated completion | 1 July 2026 |
| Sites | 1 location across United States |
Drugs / interventions tested
- Ultra-processed food - Picture Set Meal
- Ultra-processed food - Additives Meal
- Ultra-processed food - Ingredients Meal
- Minimally Processed Food - Picture Set Meal
- Minimally Processed Food - Additives Meal
- Minimally Processed Food - Ingredients Meal
Conditions studied
- Metabolic Diseases — all drugs for Metabolic Diseases →
Sponsor
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
Who can join
Adults 18 to 45, any sex, with Metabolic Diseases. Patients with the condition only — healthy volunteers not accepted.
Sponsor's own description
The minimally processed diets of our ancestors have been rapidly replaced by UPFs driving poor diet to become the leading risk factor for preventable death globally. Hence, it is essential to understand what properties of UPF are driving their overconsumption to reduce diet-related mortality. To address this gap in knowledge this proposal will test: * If UPFs have a greater post meal metabolic response when compared to MPFs an essential signal for food reward * Through the use of an auction task paradigm if UPFs overvalued and if this value is differentially encoded in the brain This study is a fully cross-over design in that each participant receives all conditions and therefore serves as their own control. All orders of foods will be counterbalanced. Although participants cannot be blinded to the conditions as they must be aware of the foods they are eating, they will not be made aware that the key manipulation is food processing. On different days participants will come to the lab and consume a meal containing either minimally or ultra-processed foods as determined by the widely used NOVA (not an acronym) scale. These conditions will be consumed in a whole room metabolic chamber allowing for simultaneous measurement of multiple metabolic responses (glucose, insulin, and metabolic rate). These measures will be collected for 45 min before consumption of the meal (baseline) and for 3 hours after consumption (post-prandial). All participants will also undergo a Becker-Degroot-Marschak auction paradigm that consists of foods that are either minimally or Ultra-processed in the MRI scanner. Food value will be measure in participants' willingness to pay for each food and Neural responses will be measured during presentation of the food cues.
Publications & conference data
No peer-reviewed publications indexed yet for this trial.
Verify or expand the search:
- PubMed search for NCT06017986
- Europe PMC full search
- ASCO Meeting Library
- ESMO Meeting Library
- bioRxiv preprints
- medRxiv preprints
- Google Scholar
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Other Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University trials
Trials by the same sponsor.
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Verify against primary sources
- ClinicalTrials.gov — authoritative US registry record
- WHO ICTRP — international registry index
- EU Clinical Trials Register
- Sponsor press releases (Google)
- Trial protocol + status: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT06017986 (US National Library of Medicine, public domain)
- Drug + disease cross-links: matched in real time against Drug Landscape's normalised drug + company + condition tables
- Sponsor: as reported to ClinicalTrials.gov by Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
- Last refreshed: 13 June 2025
Drug Landscape aggregates and links these public records for informational use only. Always verify against the primary source before clinical or regulatory decisions. Canonical URL: https://druglandscape.com/trial/NCT06017986.
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