Rethinking the Use of Mobile Apps for Dietary Assessment in Medical Research

Khazen, Wael; Jeanne, Jean-François; Demaretz, Laëtitia; Schäfer, Florent; Fagherazzi, Guy

doi:10.2196/15619

Cited by 33 publications

(49 citation statements)

References 45 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…In addition, people usually have higher satisfaction and preference for dietary assessment methods using mobile phones than traditional methods [4,[11][12][13][14][15]. Thus, the use of diet-tracking mobile apps in nutrition research may be beneficial for both participants and researchers [16].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evaluation of the Ability of Diet-Tracking Mobile Applications to Estimate Energy and Nutrient Intake in Japan

Shinozaki

Murakami

2020

Nutrients

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

We evaluated the energy and nutrient intake estimates of popular Japanese diet-tracking mobile applications (apps). We identified five diet-tracking apps in the iTunes store during August 2020. A researcher entered the dietary data from a one-day paper-based dietary record (DR) previously obtained from apparently healthy free-living adults (15 males and 15 females; 22–65 years) into each app. The energy and nutrient intakes estimated by the apps were compared with those calculated using the Standard Tables of Food Composition in Japan based on the paper-based DR (reference method). The number of dietary variables available ranged from one (energy in Mogutan) to 17 (FiNC). Compared to the DR-based estimates, the median energy intake was significantly overestimated by MyFitnessPal, Asken, Calomiru, and Mogutan. Moreover, the intakes of many nutrients were overestimated by Asken and Calomiru and underestimated by MyFitnessPal. For energy intake, the Spearman correlation coefficient between the DR and the apps was lowest for Mogutan (0.76) and highest for FiNC (0.96). The median correlation coefficient for nutrient intakes was lower in MyFitnessPal (0.50) than in the other three apps (0.80 in Asken, 0.87 in FiNC, and 0.88 in Calomiru). These results suggest that intake calculations differ among apps. Further evaluation is needed in free-living settings, where users input their own food intake.

show abstract

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evaluation of the Ability of Diet-Tracking Mobile Applications to Estimate Energy and Nutrient Intake in Japan

Shinozaki

Murakami

2020

Nutrients

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Despite the fact that the experienced clinical dietitian entered the data into mobile apps, a huge number of food options can be oppressive and can compromise the appropriate selection of correct food products, as was reported by Chen, et al [ 35 ]. Moreover, although the presence of a crowd-sourced database may be beneficial for increasing the number of food items, given that users can upload them by entering only the food name, some energy and nutrient values may be incorrect or missing [ 19 , 32 , 36 ]. Additionally, as we have mentioned before, the use of different FCDs could be also prone to error for energy and nutrients intake estimation [ 37 ].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…First are the academic apps developed by nutritional experts for research purposes, e.g., My Meal Mate [ 17 ] and DietCam [ 18 ]. The second group includes consumer-grade apps, typically developed by private institutions specialized in the digital industry, mainly for commercial purposes, e.g., MyFitnessPal, FatSecret [ 19 ]. From a scientific point of view, the first ones are more reliable and have more advantages, mostly thanks to scientific input, comparable with the RM.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Low Comparability of Nutrition-Related Mobile Apps against the Polish Reference Method—A Validity Study

2021

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Nutrition-related mobile applications (apps) are commonly used to provide information about the user’s dietary intake, however, limited research has been carried out to assess to what extent their results agree with those from the reference method (RM). The main aim of this study was to evaluate the agreement of popular nutrition-related apps with the Polish RM (Dieta 6.0). The dietary data from two days of dietary records previously obtained from adults (60 males and 60 females) were compared with values calculated in five selected apps (FatSecret, YAZIO, Fitatu, MyFitnessPal, and Dine4Fit). The selection of apps was performed between January and February 2021 and based on developed criteria (e.g., availability in the Polish language, access to the food composition database, and the number of downloads). The data was entered by experienced clinical dietitians and checked by one more researcher. The mean age of study participants was 41.7 ± 14.8. We observed that all the apps tended to overestimate the energy intake, however, when considering the macronutrient intake, over- and underestimation were observed. According to our assumed criterion (±5% as perfect agreement, ±10% as sufficient agreement), none of the apps can be recommended as a replacement for the reference method both for scientific as well as clinical use. According to the Bland-Altman analysis, the smallest bias was observed in Dine4Fit in relation to energy, protein, and fat intake (respectively: −23 kcal; −0.7 g, 3 g), however, a wide range between the upper and lower limits of agreement were reported. According to the carbohydrate intake, the lowest bias was observed when FatSecret and Fitatu were used. These results indicate that the leading nutrition-related apps present a critical issue in the assessment of energy and macronutrient intake. Therefore, the implementation of validation studies for quality assessment is crucial to develop apps with satisfying quality.

show abstract

“…However, these tools could include features that may be used to examine emotions associated with meals in an observational setting at the population level. Such features would also be important to obtain further information on background diet, which is important when evaluating the efficacy of food and dietary interventions in research [52,53], especially in patients with DGBIs [54].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mapping and Modeling of Discussions Related to Gastrointestinal Discomfort in French-Speaking Online Forums: Results of a 15-Year Retrospective Infodemiology Study

Schäfer¹,

Faviez²,

Voillot³

et al. 2020

J Med Internet Res

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Background Gastrointestinal (GI) discomfort is prevalent and known to be associated with impaired quality of life. Real-world information on factors of GI discomfort and solutions used by people is, however, limited. Social media, including online forums, have been considered a new source of information to examine the health of populations in real-life settings. Objective The aims of this retrospective infodemiology study are to identify discussion topics, characterize users, and identify perceived determinants of GI discomfort in web-based messages posted by users of French social media. Methods Messages related to GI discomfort posted between January 2003 and August 2018 were extracted from 14 French-speaking general and specialized publicly available online forums. Extracted messages were cleaned and deidentified. Relevant medical concepts were determined on the basis of the Medical Dictionary for Regulatory Activities and vernacular terms. The identification of discussion topics was carried out by using a correlated topic model on the basis of the latent Dirichlet allocation. A nonsupervised clustering algorithm was applied to cluster forum users according to the reported symptoms of GI discomfort, discussion topics, and activity on online forums. Users’ age and gender were determined by linear regression and application of a support vector machine, respectively, to characterize the identified clusters according to demographic parameters. Perceived factors of GI discomfort were classified by a combined method on the basis of syntactic analysis to identify messages with causality terms and a second topic modeling in a relevant segment of phrases. Results A total of 198,866 messages associated with GI discomfort were included in the analysis corpus after extraction and cleaning. These messages were posted by 36,989 separate web users, most of them being women younger than 40 years. Everyday life, diet, digestion, abdominal pain, impact on the quality of life, and tips to manage stress were among the most discussed topics. Segmentation of users identified 5 clusters corresponding to chronic and acute GI concerns. Diet topic was associated with each cluster, and stress was strongly associated with abdominal pain. Psychological factors, food, and allergens were perceived as the main causes of GI discomfort by web users. Conclusions GI discomfort is actively discussed by web users. This study reveals a complex relationship between food, stress, and GI discomfort. Our approach has shown that identifying web-based discussion topics associated with GI discomfort and its perceived factors is feasible and can serve as a complementary source of real-world evidence for caregivers.

show abstract

Rethinking the Use of Mobile Apps for Dietary Assessment in Medical Research

Cited by 33 publications

References 45 publications

Evaluation of the Ability of Diet-Tracking Mobile Applications to Estimate Energy and Nutrient Intake in Japan

Evaluation of the Ability of Diet-Tracking Mobile Applications to Estimate Energy and Nutrient Intake in Japan

Low Comparability of Nutrition-Related Mobile Apps against the Polish Reference Method—A Validity Study

Mapping and Modeling of Discussions Related to Gastrointestinal Discomfort in French-Speaking Online Forums: Results of a 15-Year Retrospective Infodemiology Study

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About