Energy expenditure and dietary intake in research: A visualization analysis

Abstract

Background: Assessing energy expenditure (EE) is critical for identifying dietary intake (DI) requirements for nutrition care and management. Understanding both EE and DI can provide deeper insight into energy balance, which is crucial considering the rising prevalence of obesity. Objective: The objective of this visualization and bibliometric analysis was to characterize emerging trends in EE and DI literature from 2013 to 2023. Methods: Web of Science Core Collection was searched using EE- and DI-related terms. A manual screening process was used to enhance the relevancy of included articles and to dichotomize articles as animal or human research. Results: 7149 articles were included: 4130 focused on animal models and 3462 focused on humans. Annual new publications grew 8.1% from 2013 to 2022. New publications increased faster in animal research at 10.1% compared to only 4.7% in human research. Keywords in animal and human domains clustered around four topics: ‘energy expenditure’, ‘metabolism mechanisms’, ‘obesity’, and ‘dietary intake’. The most frequent keyword was ‘obesity’ in both animal and human research. Conclusions: Animal and human research saw different trends in the rate of annual new publications, highly cited references, and keywords, highlighting the distinct approaches in animal and human models within EE and DI research.