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Have you ever used a food diary to make healthy eating choices or to lose weight? We know that keeping a food diary helps us stay more accountable to our health plan, but we would surely be happier if we could make do without having to use cumbersome traditional paper-based food diaries.
Mobile apps that act as food journals could very well be your knight-in-shining-armor. These days there are numerous available apps once downloaded to your mobile that can serve as online food diaries. Some that even allow pictures of foods to be taken and sent to a dietitian partnered with the mobile app. But, how reliable are these apps?
According to a recently published study in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association, a new mobile telephone food record has been successfully tested. The study set out to test how much easier would it be for adolescents to capture a useful image of their food and what is their ease of using a mobile telephone food record, in general and after training. The adolescents in this study, aged 11-18 years, used their cell phones to capture an image of their meals (including snacks) before and after eating.
Current problems with food recall especially among youngsters include estimating how much one ate and drank and being able to compare it to the suggested portion sizes. Catherine McCarroll, Registered Dietitian and Coordinated Program Director, Division of Nutrition at Georgia State University says, “from my experience working with both healthy weight adolescents and above average weight adolescents, it is difficult to obtain accurate food records with this age group. Parents are not a reliable source of information since adolescents typically are not with their parents for one or more meal and snacks per day.”
According to the study, a majority of the adolescents (79%) found the mobile telephone food record easy to use and the longer they used it, the more likely they were to continue using it. Training the adolescents to use the food record on their cell phones made them more agreeable to take images of the food before snacking.
The authors of the study suggest that successfully testing the mobile telephone dietary food record is valuable not only to adolescents and to others, but also benefits health care professionals such as Registered Dietitians. The study lends valuable information to the further development of the mobile telephone food record. Dr. Mildred Cody, PhD, RD, Professor Emeritus, Division of Nutrition, Georgia State University says, “use of a familiar mobile, multi-purpose technology that can take pictures of the food and record other notes, such as information on where the food is consumed and other information relevant to the individual's situation, has potential to improve both record-keeping compliance and diet recall detail.”
While the mobile telephone food record is further being developed, such studies lend support to a user-friendly food record soon within our reach. At the end of the day, adolescents are more likely to accept tools that fit into their lifestyles. When it comes to staying in shape, technology is helpful and interactive products more acceptable. As Evelyn Leo, Diabetes Educator and Registered Dietitian summarizes, “using a phone camera to take pictures of foods may improve accuracy of food recalls for a population accustomed to using technology in their everyday lives.”
What’s in it for you?
Not only youngsters, but as a consumer you stand to gain from using a mobile telephone food record because:
- It is easy to use. You need not be tech-savvy
- It will literally be available at your finger tips
- It is reliable having undergone successful testing
- A pictorial food diary would most likely be preferred over using a paper-based food diary
- Frequently using it after undergoing training will make you more efficient in recording your food intake
- You will be able to send valuable dietary information and receive feedback from your dietitian
- You will be a true eco-friendly citizen saving paper otherwise used for paper-based food diaries!
Mobile telephone food records seem promising. We might soon joyfully bid adieu to keeping old-fashioned food diaries.
About the author: Nida Shaikh, MS, RD, LD
A self-confessed chocoholic, outdoor enthusiast, half-marathon distance runner and an ambidextrous Registered Dietitian currently pursuing a doctoral degree in nutrition at Emory University.
Reference: Six BL, Schap TE, Zhu FM, Mariappam A, Bosch M, Delp EJ, Ebert DS, Kerr DA, Boushey CJ. Evidence-based development of a mobile telephone food record. J Am Diet Assoc. 2010 Jan;110(1):74-9.
