Electronic food records among middle-aged and older people: A comparison of self-reported and dietitian-assisted information
Funding information: NHMRC Dementia Research Team Grant, Grant/Award Number: APP1095097
Abstract
Aim
Nutrition-based applications (“apps”) offer enormous research potential, however evidence of their use and acceptability among older adults is limited. We compared self-reported and dietitian-adjusted dietary intake records among adults aged 55 to 75 years using the Research Food Diary (RFD) app.
Methods
Participants were recruited from the 45 and Up Study and completed a 3-day food record using the RFD. A follow-up dietetic telephone interview was performed to confirm the electronic dietary data. Independent of these interviews, a set of adjustments based on dietetic skills, nutritional database knowledge, food composition and dietary assessment was established to resolve probable reporting errors. The “adjusted” and “dietitian-assisted” records were compared to self-reported records for nutrient intakes and serves of The Five Food Groups using one-way repeated measures analysis of variance.
Results
Sixty-two participants were recruited, with 48 using the RFD app which included eight records without any identified errors. Reporting errors contained in the raw self-reported records included: food items with missing/implausible quantities or insufficient descriptions to allow automatic coding. After removal of unusable records, 44 records were analysed. Differences were found between the self-reported and adjusted records for protein, calcium, vitamin B12, zinc and dairy food serves (all P < .001; differences up to 8%). No significant differences were found between the adjusted and dietitian-assisted measures.
Conclusions
Similarities between adjusted and dietitian-assisted records suggest carefully applied dietetic assumptions are likely to improve accuracy of self-reported intake data where dietitian interviews are not possible. We provide four key recommendations to guide this process.
CONFLICT OF INTEREST
H.B. sits on the Advisory Board for Nutricia Australia. K.D. is a recipient of extra virgin olive oil supplied in kind by Cobram Estate Pty Ltd. No other authors declare any conflict of interest. Xyris Software (Australia) Pty Ltd was not involved in the study design, data analysis, interpretation or writing of this manuscript.
