Active Image-Assisted Food Records in Comparison to Regular Food Records: A Validation Study against Doubly Labeled Water in 12-Month-Old Infants

Abstract

Overreporting of dietary intake in infants is a problem when using food records (FR), distorting possible relationships between diet and health outcomes. Image-assisted dietary assessment may improve the accuracy, but to date, evaluation in the pediatric setting is limited. The aim of the study was to compare macronutrient and energy intake by using an active image-assisted five-day FR against a regular five-day FR, and to validate image-assistance with total energy expenditure (TEE), was measured using doubly labeled water. Participants in this validation study were 22 healthy infants randomly selected from the control group of a larger, randomized intervention trial. The parents reported the infants’ dietary intake, and supplied images of main course meals taken from standardized flat-surfaced plates before and after eating episodes. Energy and nutrient intakes were calculated separately using regular FR and image-assisted FRs. The mean (± standard deviations) energy intake (EI) was 3902 ± 476 kJ/day from the regular FR, and 3905 ± 476 kJ/day from the FR using active image-assistance. The mean EI from main-course meals when image-assistance was used did not differ (1.7 ± 55 kJ, p = 0.89) compared to regular FRs nor did the intake of macronutrients. Compared to TEE, image-assisted FR overestimated EI by 10%. Without validation, commercially available software to aid in the volume estimations, food item identification, and automation of the image processing, image-assisted methods remain a more costly and burdensome alternative to regular FRs in infants. The image-assisted method did, however, identify leftovers better than did regular FR, where such information is usually not readily available.

Assessing dinner meals offered at home among preschoolers from low‐income families with the Remote Food Photography Method

“…No families photographed desserts or evening snacks, which may explain why sweets and sugars were reported infrequently in this study. Fourth, the accuracy of image‐based dietary assessments can be limited by the researcher's ability to accurately estimate portion size from food images . This can be particularly challenging for some types of foods, including mixed dishes or layered foods.…”

“…Third, parents were asked to photograph "the dinner meal" and "foods and beverages that are part of dinner," but how parents defined "dinner" may have varied across families. No families photographed desserts or evening snacks, which may explain why sweets and sugars were reported infrequently in this study.Fourth, the accuracy of image-based dietary assessments can be limited by the researcher's ability to accurately estimate portion size from food images [47][48][49]. This can be particularly challenging for some types of foods, including mixed dishes or layered foods.…”

An Active Image-Based Mobile Food Record Is Feasible for Capturing Eating Occasions among Infants Ages 3–12 Months Old in Hawai‘i

“…In this paper, three different cut-offs were used, <1 min, between 1 and 120 min and >120 min. There are various ways in which timing data can be interpreted such as less than 5 [ 17 ] or 10 [ 25 ] minutes as snacks or lasting as long as 120 min [ 26 ]. However, duration of the at-the-breast sessions may have significant variability such as night feeds lasting longer than during the day feeds, and differences in the length of feeds for younger versus older infants.…”

“…In addition, this study gathered the perspective of the caregivers on usability of the baby mFR. This study addresses identified recommendations for using a mobile app specifically designed for capturing dietary assessment of infants [ 17 ].…”

Advancement in Dietary Assessment and Self-Monitoring Using Technology

“…Image-based or image-assisted methods were used to capture dietary intake and are were reported in this special issue in three studies [12,13,14], two of which were carried out in pediatric populations [13,14]. A validation study in young infants investigated the accuracy of image-assisted food records versus regular food records compared to the objective marker of doubly labelled water (DLW) method [13]. Another study in children of primary school age (9–12 years) investigated the accuracy of an electronic image-based food diary compared with a paper-based food diary over a four-day collection period [14].…”