BackgroundYoung Australians aged between 18 and 30 years have experienced the largest increase in the body mass index and spend the largest proportion of their food budget on fast food and eating out. Frequent consumption of foods purchased and eaten away from home has been linked to poorer diet quality and weight gain. There has been no Australian research regarding quantities, type, or the frequency of consumption of food prepared outside the home by young adults and its impact on their energy and nutrient intakes.ObjectivesThe objective of this study was to determine the relative contributions of different food outlets (eg, fast food chain, independent takeaway food store, coffee shop, etc) to the overall food and beverage intake of young adults; to assess the extent to which food and beverages consumed away from home contribute to young adults’ total energy and deleterious nutrient intakes; and to study social and physical environmental interactions with consumption patterns of young adults.MethodsA cross-sectional study of 1008 young adults will be conducted. Individuals are eligible to participate if they: (1) are aged between 18 and 30 years; (2) reside in New South Wales, Australia; (3) own or have access to a smartphone; (4) are English-literate; and (5) consume at least one meal, snack, or drink purchased outside the home per week. An even spread of gender, age groups (18 to 24 years and 25 to 30 years), metropolitan or regional geographical areas, and high and low socioeconomic status areas will be included. Participants will record all food and drink consumed over 3 consecutive days, together with location purchased and consumed in our customized smartphone app named Eat and Track (EaT). Participants will then complete an extensive demographics questionnaire. Mean intakes of energy, nutrients, and food groups will be calculated along with the relative contribution of foods purchased and eaten away from home. A subsample of 19.84% (200/1008) of the participants will complete three 24-hour recall interviews to compare with the data collected using EaT. Data mining techniques such as clustering, decision trees, neural networks, and support vector machines will be used to build predictive models and identify important patterns.ResultsRecruitment is underway, and results will be available in 2018.ConclusionsThe contribution of foods prepared away from home, in terms of energy, nutrients, deleterious nutrients, and food groups to young people’s diets will be determined, as will the impact on meeting national recommendations. Foods and consumption behaviors that should be targeted in future health promotion efforts for young adults will be identified.

Mobile food logging is important but people find it tedious and difficult to do. Our work tackles the challenging aspect of searching a large food database on a small mobile screen. We describe the design of the EaT (Eat and Track) app with its Search-Accelerator to support searches on >6,000 foods. We designed a study to harness data from a large nutrition study to provide insights about the use and user experience of EaT. We report the results of our evaluation: a 12-participant lab study and a public health research field study where 1,027-participants entered their nutrition intake for 3 days, logging 30,715 food items. We also analysed 1,163 user-created food entries from 670 participants to gain insights about the causes of failures in the food search. Our core contributions are: 1) the design and evaluation of EaT's support for accurate and detailed food logging; 2) our study design that harnesses a nutrition research study to provide insights about timeliness of logging and the strengths and weaknesses of the search; 3) new performance benchmarks for mobile food logging.

Young adults are the highest consumers of food prepared outside home (FOH) and gain most weight among Australian adults. One strategy to address the obesogenic food environment is menu labelling legislation whereby outlets with >20 stores in one state and >50 Australia-wide must display energy content in kJ. The aim of this study was to assess the contribution of FOH to the energy and macronutrients, saturated fat, total sugars and sodium intakes of young Australians. One thousand and one 18 to 30-year-olds (57% female) residing in Australia’s most populous state recorded all foods and beverages consumed and the location of preparation for three consecutive days using a purpose-designed smartphone application. Group means for the daily consumption of energy, percentage energy (%E) for protein, carbohydrate, total sugars, total and saturated fats, and sodium density (mg/1000 kJ) and proportions of nutrients from FOH from menu labelling and independent outlets were compared. Overall, participants consumed 42.4% of their energy intake from FOH with other nutrients ranging from 39.8% (sugars) to 47.3% (sodium). Independent outlets not required to label menus, contributed a greater percentage of energy (23.6%) than menu labelling outlets (18.7%, p < 0.001). Public health policy responses such as public education campaigns, extended menu labelling, more detailed nutrition information and reformulation targets are suggested to facilitate healthier choices.

BackgroundDietary assessment is reliant on the collection of accurate food and beverage consumption data. Technology has been harnessed to standardize recording and provide automatic nutritional analysis to reduce cost and researcher burden.ObjectiveTo better assess the diet of young adults, especially relating to the contribution of foods prepared outside the home, a database was needed to support a mobile phone data collection app. The app also required usability testing to assure ease of entry of foods and beverages. This paper describes the development of the Eat and Track app (EaT app) and the database underpinning it.MethodsThe Australian Food and Nutrient Database 2011-13, consisting of 5740 food items was modified. Four steps were undertaken: (1) foods not consumed by young adults were removed, (2) nutritionally similar foods were merged, (3) foods available from the 30 largest ready-to-eat food chains in Australia were added, and (4) long generic food names were shortened and simplified. This database was used to underpin the EaT app. Qualitative, iterative usability testing of the EaT app was conducted in three phases using the “Think Aloud” method. Responses were sorted and coded using content analysis. The System Usability Scale (SUS) was administered to measure the EaT app’s perceived usability.ResultsIn total, 1694 (29.51%) foods were removed from the Australian Food and Nutrient Database, including 608 (35.89%) ingredients, 81 (4.78%) foods already captured in the fast food chain information, 52 (3.07%) indigenous foods, 25 (1.48%) nutrients/dietary supplements, and 16 (0.94%) child-specific foods. The remaining 912 (53.84%) foods removed were not consumed by young adults in previous surveys or were “not defined” in the Australian Food and Nutrient Database. Another 220 (3.83%) nutritionally similar foods were combined. The final database consisted of 6274 foods. Fifteen participants completed usability testing. Issues identified by participants fell under six themes: keywords for searching, history list of entered foods, amounts and units, the keypad, food names, and search function. Suggestions for improvement were collected, incorporated, and tested in each iteration of the app. The SUS of the final version of the EaT app was rated 69.ConclusionsA food and beverage database has been developed to underpin the EaT app, enabling data collection on the eating-out habits of 18- to 30-year-old Australians. The development process has resulted in a database with commonly used food names, extensive coverage of foods from ready-to-eat chains, and commonly eaten portion sizes. Feedback from app usability testing led to enhanced keyword searching and the addition of functions to enhance usability such as adding brief instructional screens. There is potential for the features of the EaT app to facilitate the collection of more accurate dietary intake data. The database and the app will be valuable dietary assessment resources for researchers.

No abstract