Objective: Food records method (FRM) is traditionally used for measurements of dietary intake which can be valuable for diabetes education, but pen and paper based according to subjects’ recall. To date, applying digital technology has tended to focus on introducing improvements relying to instant data entry, improvements relating to coding and analysing food intake. The purpose of this study was to evaluate new technologies using smartphone such as food photography method (FPM) and food diary mobile application (APP) with comparison to FRM in dietary assessment.
Methods: A total of 90 meal records were collected from 3 healthy students in Eulji University using 11 day-FRM, FPM (Subjects take a picture of the meal before and after eating and added a simple memo about food), and ‘Fatsecret’ APP by dietician (APP-d) and subjects(App-s). FRM and FPM data were analyzed by the trained dietitian using Can-pro 4.0. The correlations between groups were analyzed by paired t-test. The differences of the macronutrient intake using new methods and FRM were calculated and compared according to menu (single dish, composite dish, processed food) types using ANOVA.
Results: The mean age of total subjects was 26.3 ± 2.1 years. Energy intake from FPM, APP-d, and APP-s showed a strong positive correlation with that from FRM (r = 0.988, P〈 0.01: r = 0.962, 〈 0.01: r = 0.587,P〈 0.01 respectively). Energy intake from APP-s was significantly lower than that from FRM (418.7 ± 56.4 kcal vs 646.6 ± 144.6 kcal, P < 0.05) in single dish, but no statistical difference in composite dish and processed food.
Conclusion: FPM could be good alternative to FRM in dietary assessment. APP seemed to need to be improved for assessing nutrient intake, especially single dish menu. The dietitian will need to educate about the portion size of the food for using with APP.