JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Food intake and dietary habits represent key determinants of health to be assessed in medical research, and important confounding factors to be accounted for in clinical studies. While various methods are available to gather dietary data, those based on innovative technologies are particularly promising. With combined cost-effectiveness and ease of use, it is safe to assume that mobile technologies can now optimize the tracking of meals and dietary behaviors. Yet, the choice of a Dietary Assessment Tool meeting both research objectives and data quality standards remains challenging, while the use of these tools in medical research is still controversial. In this article, we describe the different purposes of dietary data collection in medical research and outline the main considerations for the use of mobile dietary assessment tools based on participant’s and researcher’s expectations, to introduce our recommendations for the evaluation of academic and consumer-grade mobile applications in medical research.