Background: Memory influences decision-making regarding eating behaviour. However, marketing utilises our memory to exploit our consumptive habits. Whether we have an inherent bias towards memorising visual cues associated with high-calorie foods and how such bias contributes to our health outcomes remains to be determined. We therefore aimed to develop and validate a computerized, image-based Food Memory Bias Task (FMBT) for use in multiethnic Asian populations. Methods: In the development phase involving 172 participants, 91.9% rated the instrument as user-friendly and we optimised the instrument format into 12 visual food cues and 30-min delay period to avoid a ceiling effect. In the validation phase involving 184 multi-ethnic Asian participants (49.3 (14.5) years old, 44.6% male, 71.7% Chinese), FMBT memory score was associated with the brief assessment of cognition memory (β(p) = 0.23 (5.1 × 10⁻⁶)), and general cognition score ‘g’ (β(p) = 0.30 (6.5 × 10⁻⁹)). Results: Higher memory bias was associated with lower memory score in the low-calorie bias group ($r=-0.33$, $p=0.002$), but not in the hig h-calorie bias group. In this present study, despite randomly administering two versions of the test across visits, the FMBT bias score demonstrates a significant learning effect and low reproducibility (r(p) = −0.14 (0.11) across visits). Food memory bias score is associated with higher food approach traits according to the Adult-Eating Behaviour Questionnaire (β(p) = 0.23(0.015)), independent of age, sex, and ethnicity. Conclusion: FMBT provides an opportunity to address epidemiological questions on how food memory bias influences dietary habit and cardiometabolic health, and how it is in turn shaped by our built environment.

Background: Sarcopenia is associated with adverse surgical outcomes. Recent literature suggested that pre-surgery prehabilitation, nutrition and β-Hydroxy β-methylbutyric acid (HMB) supplementation improve myological and functional outcomes. However, long-term outcomes remain uncertain. Thus, we aimed to analyse findings from the long-term follow-up of surgical patients undergoing oral supplementation and prehabilitation. Methods: A prospective single-centre pilot cohort study was conducted to evaluate the effects of multimodal prehabilitation using high-protein oral nutritional supplementation (HP-ONS) with HMB. Sarcopenic patients between 40 and 90 years old and undergoing gastrointestinal surgery were included from June 2022 to January 2024. Patients were followed up from two to four weeks pre-operatively to six months post-operatively. Paired Wilcoxon signed-rank tests were conducted to evaluate outcomes between time points. Results: 36 patients were included with a median age of 71.5 years (IQR: 55–90), and 50% were male. 12 (33.3%) patients were sarcopenic, while 24 (66.7%) were severely sarcopenic. No significant difference in IMAT% was observed at post-operative six months. Number of chair rise repetitions (Median:15 vs. 11, p < 0.001) and six-min walk test (Median: 387 m vs. 349 m, p = 0.020), mid-arm muscle circumference (Median: 23.7 cm vs. 22.5 cm, p = 0.013), mid-arm muscle area (Median: 44.8 cm² vs. 39.3 cm², p = 0.005), weight (Median: 51.6 kg vs. 50.8 kg, p = 0.023) and BMI (Median: 23.2 kg/m² vs. 21.8 kg/m², p = 0.025) increased significantly at six-months post-operatively from surgery. Conclusions: Our findings suggest that improvements in anthropometric and functional outcomes from prehabilitation may persist beyond the acute recovery period. If supported by future works, multimodal prehabilitation has the potential to optimise postoperative recovery amongst sarcopenic older adult surgical patients.