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Online personalised nutrition advice
The Internet has considerable potential to improve health-related food choice at lowcost.
In order to provide online personalised nutrition advice, a valid and user-friendly
method for recording dietary intake is key. Yet, the author’s review of popular nutritionrelated
mobile apps revealed that none of these apps were capable of providing
personalised diet advice
This work presents a web app (eNutri), which is able to assess dietary intake using a
validated food frequency questionnaire (FFQ) and provide personalised food-based diet
advice. The initial version of this app presented the food items in a list and its usability
was evaluated in Kuwait. In response to user feedback, the design was modified to
present a single food item at a time. This app was deployed in an online study to assess
usability with 324 participants in the UK, using different devices. The median System
Usability Scale (SUS) score (n=322) was 77.5 (IQR 15.0) out of 100, illustrating high
acceptance by users.
Potential users were consulted during the design process, but assessing whether
nutrition professionals (n=32) agree with the automated advice and collecting their
insights were important in maximising the success and wider utility of this app. The
mean scores for the appropriateness, relevance and suitability of the eNutri diet
messages by nutritional professionals were 3.5, 3.3 and 3.3 respectively (maximum 5).
Its effectiveness was evaluated during a 12-week online randomly controlled parallel
blinded dietary intervention (n=210) (EatWellUK study) in which personalised dietary
advice was compared with general population recommendation (control). A significant
improvement in the modified Alternative Healthy Eating Index (m-AHEI) score, against
which the participants’ diets were compared, of 3.06 (CI 95% 0.91 to 5.21, p=0.005),
was reported following personalised compared to population advice.
This work indicates the benefit of personalised dietary advice delivered online to
motivate dietary change. The eNutri app’s design and source code were made publicly
available under a permissive open source license, so that other researchers and
organizations can benefit from this work