Development and validity of a 3-day smartphone assisted 24-hour recall to assess beverage consumption in a Chinese population: a randomized cross-over study

This paper addresses the need for diet assessment methods that capture the rapidly changing beverage consumption patterns in China. The objective of this study was to develop a 3-day smartphone-assisted 24-hour recall to improve the quantification of beverage intake amongst young Chinese adults (n=110) and validate, in a small subset (n=34), the extent to which the written record and smartphone-assisted recalls adequately estimated total fluid intake, using 24-hour urine samples. The smartphone-assisted method showed improved validity compared with the written record-assisted method, when comparing reported total fluid intake to total urine volume. However, participants reported consuming fewer beverages on the smartphone-assisted method compared with the written record-assisted method, primarily due to decreased consumption of traditional zero-energy beverages (i.e. water, tea) in the smartphone-assisted method. It is unclear why participants reported fewer beverages in the smartphone-assisted method than the written record -assisted method. One possibility is that participants found the smartphone method too cumbersome, and responded by decreasing beverage intake. These results suggest that smartphone-assisted 24-hour recalls perform comparably but do not appear to substantially improve beverage quantification compared with the current written record-based approach. In addition, we piloted a beverage screener to identify consumers of episodically consumed SSBs. As expected, a substantially higher proportion of consumers reported consuming SSBs on the beverage screener compared with either recall type, suggesting that a beverage screener may be useful in characterizing consumption of episodically consumed beverages in China's dynamic food and beverage landscape.