Previously submitted to: JMIR mHealth and uHealth (no longer under consideration since Nov 16, 2021)
Date Submitted: Jun 28, 2018
Open Peer Review Period: Jul 3, 2018 - Aug 28, 2018
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Evaluation of a mobile phone-based intervention with photographs to improve healthy food choices
Background:
Mobile phone-based interventions have demonstrated positive effects on body compositionand food habits. They are cheap, easy to implement and could play an important role in fighting health problems. However, their potential as tools for monitoring or dietary treatment has yet to be examined. As far as we know, no specific application has been designed to keep health specialists and patients in touch, providing fluid communication between them to record, monitor and evaluate dietary behaviour via photographs.
Objective:
To describe the experiences of users of a mobile-phone app designed to provide monitoring and deliver feedback with healthy choices. To identify factors facilitating usage of a phone-based intervention with photographs.
Methods:
We carried out an experiment via an instant message application over 5 working days. 20 young adult Spanish volunteers were enrolled to upload and send all their food choices to a dietitian via a mobile instant messaging application. They were asked to send information on all intakes other than water to their dietitian during the trial. The dietitian responded with a numerical evaluation of how healthy the volunteers’ choice was on a scale of 0 to 5, including an attached photo as a healthier alternative. We provided participants with an online survey using a Likert scale in order to collect information on their experience during the trial
Results:
A total of 368 intakes were evaluated and 368 different intakes were suggested as alternatives The most noteworthy questions mentioned by the participants are the motivational aspect of the experience, or the usefulness of alternative suggestions for meals. Other advantages for the participants were the awareness of what they eat and being able to control their food better. 82,4% of the sample state they were influenced to eat more healthy food. 95% were “motivated to eat better during the experiment”. Furthermore, 58,8% acknowledged their diet was better during the trial than their normal routine.
Conclusions:
The participants stated that the experiment made them change their routines, eat a more healthy diet and feel motivated. Unfortunately, we did not collect pre-intervention or long-term dietary records. An application using food choice photographs could be a valuable tool to motivate people to enhance their food habits with the direct assistance of dietitian.
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