Reliability Issues of Mobile Nutrition Apps for Cardiovascular Disease Prevention: Comparative Study.

Area of Science:

• Nutrition science
• Digital health
• Cardiovascular disease prevention

Background:

• Controlling saturated fat and cholesterol intake is crucial for preventing cardiovascular diseases.
• Mobile diet-tracking apps are increasingly used, but their reliability for tracking these nutrients internationally is not well understood.

Purpose of the Study:

• To assess the reliability and consistency of nutrition apps in tracking saturated fat and cholesterol intake.
• To identify data omission, value variability, and cross-national reliability issues in popular diet-tracking apps.

Main Methods:

• Compared nutrient data from 5 apps (4 consumer, 1 academic) against 2 national food composition databases (USDA and Taiwan FCD).
• Analyzed data omission, calculated coefficients of variation for data inconsistency, and used ANOVA and t-tests for statistical comparisons.
• Investigated cross-national reliability by comparing app versions (MyFitnessPal-Chinese vs. MyFitnessPal-English) against different national databases.

Main Results:

• All apps underestimated cholesterol (errors -26.3% to -60.3%), and 4 apps underestimated saturated fats (-13.8% to -40.3%).
• Significant data omission was found (e.g., 47% for saturated fat in COFIT, 62% for cholesterol in MyFitnessPal-Chinese).
• High variability in saturated fat and cholesterol values was observed across food groups and within apps, with errors persisting regardless of the reference database used.

Conclusions:

• Consumer-grade nutrition apps exhibit substantial inaccuracies and inconsistencies in reporting saturated fat and cholesterol.
• These findings raise concerns about the efficacy of current diet-tracking apps for cardiovascular disease prevention, especially across different national contexts.