Development and Evaluation of e-CA, an Electronic Mobile-Based Food Record.

Area of Science:

• Nutritional Science
• Health Informatics
• Mobile Health (mHealth)

Background:

• Accurate dietary assessment is crucial for nutritional research.
• Mobile technology offers potential for improved food data collection.
• Validation of digital tools for dietary intake measurement is needed.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and evaluate an electronic mobile-based food record (e-CA) for research.
• To assess the usability, accuracy, and reliability of the e-CA tool.
• To compare e-CA with traditional dietary assessment methods.

Main Methods:

• Development of e-CA with a database of nearly 900 foods.
• Usability and acceptability assessed via logbook and interviews.
• Dietary intake accuracy compared to two 24-hour phone recalls.
• Reliability and process compared to paper-based food records in a lab setting.

Main Results:

• e-CA was found to be intuitive, practical, modern, and enjoyable.
• Good agreement was observed between e-CA and 24-hour recalls/paper records.
• Challenges in portion size estimation and initial learning time were noted.
• Reduced participant burden and researcher workload were indicated.

Conclusions:

• e-CA is a functional mobile tool for facilitating food intake measurement in research.
• The app has the potential to enhance participant engagement and reduce data collection burdens.
• e-CA offers advantages in reducing workload, costs, and transcription errors for researchers.