Mrs Jacqueline Duncan

Biography

I joined the Rowett in 1986 at age 17, starting out in the Chemical and Physical analysis department with Dr Maureen Annand and Dr Bob Smart. I obtained an ONC in Biology and Chemistry at NESCol then I went on to Robert Gordons Institute of Technology (now RGU) to complete an  HNC in Chemistry  before studying with the Open University for 5 years graduating with a BSc honours degree in Biological Sciences.

1989 to 1999 - Research assistant to Prof.Paul Trayhurn in Biomedical sciences working on brown and white adipose tissue collaborating with Dr Vernon Rayner and Dr Nigel Hoggard. During these ten years over 100 students from all over the world came though our lab.

2000-2006- Research assistant to Prof.John Speakman investigating factors on the regulation of Ob gene expression and circulating and secreted leptin and its relationship to voluntary food intake and energy balance.

2007- March 2022 - Research assistant for Prof.Julian Mercer looking at how different solid and obesogenic diets interact with hypothalamic energy balance and hypothalamic reward based systems.

In 2013 the HABIT study (Habitual food choices) was launched. HABIT 1 assessed the habitual dietary sugar intake in adults. HABIT 2 focused on sugar in drinks. Working with Julian, Dr Dan Powell and Dr Ruth Slater, HABIT 3 - focused on food choice and eating behaviour, in particular, sugar in hot drinks, fizzy drinks, and breakfast cereal and, the Bread and Starchy carbohydrate study looking at  changing consumption patterns of starchy carbohydrates.

2020-2022 During the pandemic the HABIT COVID study focused on eating behaviours before, during after the period of panic buying.

2020-2021 Womb to Wean study with Dr Jacqueline Wallace scoring over 2000 baby food weaning videos.

April 2022 to present  - Research assistant for Prof.Wendy Russell  and collaboration with Dr Madalina Neacsu on Food Innovation and food security - reformulating food to reduce harm from fat and sugar, and reducing waste.

Research Overview

Food Choice and Eating Behaviour

The HABIT project is part of RESAS programme 2016-2022 3.2.4; Objective 2.2  ‘Establishing protocols for encouraging dietary habit change’.

One of the main targets of University Research is ‘Improving health and Preventing disease’ .By helping volunteers successfully reduce, cut down or replace sugar in their diet then in the long term this could have positive health benefits.

The idea with these Food Choice studies HABIT 1, HABIT 2 and  HABIT 3, is that, if volunteers can make small manageable changes to their diet, one at a time (cut out sugar in tea and coffee, switch to low calorie drinks, switch from brown to white bread, switch to a lower sugar cereal) then cumulatively over time these changes will help to improve their health and hopefully reduce their risk of disease and possibly increase life expectancy. Also there is a chance that these changes in food choice are passed on to a volunteer’s partner, siblings or children.

HABIT Covid Study

How have people’s habits changed as a result of the significant changes in social and environmental context of eating associated with COVID-19 restrictions?

Current Research

HABIT 3 'Interested in Sugar?' study

HABIT Covid study

The COVID-19 outbreak led to the UK Government announcing the onset of severe restrictions on social practices and norms from mid-March 2020. These have continued into April and are likely to be retained in one form or other for the foreseeable future. Due to these restrictions, people have been removed from the relatively stable contexts within which dietary (and other) habits are formed and sustained (Ouelette & Wood, 1998).  With many individuals being removed from their typical environments, the usual cues to their behaviour have been removed, and therefore (in theory) all automatic behaviour will be reduced: a direct test to the habit discontinuity hypothesis (Verplanken, Roy, & Whitmarsh, 2018). COVID-19 restrictions provide an opportunity to further examine the maintenance of habits over time, using the natural experiment design whereby the present study provides detailed “baseline” data from which to compare.

• How have people’s habits changed as a result of the significant changes in social and environmental context of eating associated with COVID-19 restrictions?

Past Research

HABIT 2 'Can food preferences be altered through repeated exposure?'

Few tastes are innately liked or disliked. The majority of our preferences are learned via repeated exposure. This is considered an evolutionary benefit, to allow for easy modification of liking in the event of environmental change (when food sources would alter). Even those foods that are initially aversive (e.g. bitter tastes) are malleable through the process of tasting them over time. Repeated exposure has a robust effect on preference and ad libitum consumption in children, but is rarely used as a way of modifying adult food preferences. The Revised Dietary Goals for Scotland from May 2013 include “Average intake of non-milk extrinsic sugars (NMES) to reduce to less than 11% of food energy in children and adults”. This target is not currently being met, and intake remains too high. The draft SACN ‘Carbohydrates and Health’ paper recommends adopting a UK population average for ‘free sugars’ (suggested revised wording) intake of around 5% of dietary energy, in line with WHO guidelines. Achieving this revised target will be a major challenge. Food reformulation will have a role to play in this reduction – changing the amount of sugar in the environment. Supporting consumers in reducing sugar (or other unhealthy food components) in their diet through change (dehabituation) in taste preference provides an opportunity for beneficial behaviour change towards a healthier diet. Research is required to optimise this approach.

Hypothesis: Repeated exposure to an alternative beverage will alter preference and choice.

HABIT 1 'Habitual food choices'

The identification and promotion of beneficial changes in dietary choice and behaviour lie at the heart of the Scottish and UK Governments’ respective strategies for tackling the obesity epidemic. It is also well recognized that achieving and sustaining behaviour change, especially for a long term health benefit that may be difficult for the individual to appreciate, is a major challenge, and dietary targets provide a good example of this. The dietary choices that individuals make reflect any innate preferences, reinforced by years or decades of habitual behaviour in the current food environment. This environment is characterized by a wide choice of easily sourced, palatable, energy dense foods, rich in fats and sugars.

Physiology and metabolism directly influence behaviour. Key questions in Objective 4 are: what biological systems are we trying to combat or re-entrain as we attempt to change the dietary behaviour of individuals? As a proof-of-principal for attempts to change habitual food choice, we will focus on sugar consumption

Knowledge Exchange

Participant recruitment for human studies and knowledge exchange at annual Health and Wellbeing events at Kings College and the Suttie centre. 

Participant recruitment for human studies and knowledge exchange at the annual Deeside Food Festival held at Cults Academy, Techfest events, Open Doors Day and alos at freshers week events both at the Aberdeen University campus and North East of Scotland College (NESCol) city and Altens campuses.

(Due to the ongoing Covid Pandemic many nowledge exchange events were postponed in 2021)