Ebook The Food We Eat: An Evaluation of Food Items Input into an Electronic Food Monitoring Application
Researchers and clinicians use food diaries, 24 hour recalls, and food frequency questionnaires to gain a deeper understanding of what people consume. Unfortunately, these methods assume the participant has high literacy and memory recall skills. Furthermore, researchers must invest a significant amount of time in administration and evaluation of the results.
We work with chronic kidney disease (CKD) stage 5 patients who must rigorously monitor their fluid and nutrient consumption. In general, patients must limit themselves to one to two liters of fluid, three grams of sodium, three grams of potassium, and limit phosphorus intake. Many people in our user group cannot perform simple calculations and have varying literacy levels. We recruit from an urban, public dialysis facility where most patients are from low socioeconomic families. Thus, traditional methods for nutrition monitoring are difficult to administer in this user group.
We are creating a PDA application to help chronically ill people monitor and maintain their nutritional intake. We chose to use a PDA because it has sufficient computational power and memory to create an application that can automatically compute and record dietary intake; a computer screen to easily show non-textual information; the ability to provide real-time feedback to patients to make improved decisions about diet on a prospective basis; and quick input mechanisms for patients to record information anywhere, anytime. For our application, the primary method to input food is by scanning the barcode on the food item package.
Posted in :
