FoodSwitch: A Mobile Phone App to Enable Consumers to Make Healthier Food Choices and Crowdsourcing of National Food Composition Data
FoodSwitch: A Mobile Phone App to Enable Consumers to Make Healthier Food Choices and Crowdsourcing of National Food Composition Data
复制标题
DOI：
10.2196/mhealth.3230
复制
发表时间：
2014-07-01
影响因子：
5
通讯作者：
Neal, Bruce
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Dunford, Elizabeth;Trevena, Helen;Neal, Bruce
背景：包装正面营养标签（FoPL）方案可以帮助消费者了解食品的营养成分，并可能有助于选择更健康的食品。然而，大多数包装食品在澳大利亚没有携带易于解释的FoPL，没有标准的FoPL系统尚未被强制执行。大约三分之二的澳大利亚人现在拥有智能手机。目的：我们试图开发一款手机应用程序，为消费者提供易于理解的营养信息，并在购买食物时支持更健康的选择。方法：现有的品牌食品数据库包括17,000澳大利亚包装食品支持该项目。开发、审查和测试的迭代过程被用来定义一个可以传递营养信息的用户界面。一个平行的过程确定了根据营养成分对食物进行排序的最佳方法，这样就可以推荐更健康的替代产品。结果：条形码扫描技术被确定为手机与食品数据库交互的最佳机制。交通信号灯标签被选为展示营养信息的首选格式，澳大利亚和新西兰食品标准的营养概况分析方法是识别更健康产品的最佳策略。由此产生的FoodSwitch手机应用程序于2012年1月在澳大利亚推出，在前18个月就有大约40万用户下载。FoodSwitch一直保持着4星以上的评级，超过2000名用户提供了关于该功能的反馈。通过集成在应用程序中的众包功能，从用户那里获得了超过30,000种额外产品的营养信息。结论：FoodSwitch使澳大利亚消费者能够寻求更好的食物选择。与此同时，大量的众包数据为低成本、实时跟踪澳大利亚食品的营养成分提供了一种新方法。在许多其他国家，这种做法似乎有很大的机会。
Background: Front-of-pack nutrition labeling (FoPL) schemes can help consumers understand the nutritional content of foods and may aid healthier food choices. However, most packaged foods in Australia carry no easily interpretable FoPL, and no standard FoPL system has yet been mandated. About two thirds of Australians now own a smartphone.Objective: We sought to develop a mobile phone app that would provide consumers with easy-to-understand nutrition information and support the selection of healthier choices when shopping for food.Methods: An existing branded food database including 17,000 Australian packaged foods underpinned the project. An iterative process of development, review, and testing was undertaken to define a user interface that could deliver nutritional information. A parallel process identified the best approach to rank foods based on nutritional content, so that healthier alternative products could be recommended.Results: Barcode scanning technology was identified as the optimal mechanism for interaction of the mobile phone with the food database. Traffic light labels were chosen as the preferred format for presenting nutritional information, and the Food Standards Australia New Zealand nutrient profiling method as the best strategy for identifying healthier products. The resulting FoodSwitch mobile phone app was launched in Australia in January 2012 and was downloaded by about 400,000 users in the first 18 months. FoodSwitch has maintained a 4-plus star rating, and more than 2000 users have provided feedback about the functionality. Nutritional information for more than 30,000 additional products has been obtained from users through a crowdsourcing function integrated within the app.Conclusions: FoodSwitch has empowered Australian consumers seeking to make better food choices. In parallel, the huge volume of crowdsourced data has provided a novel means for low-cost, real-time tracking of the nutritional composition of Australian foods. There appears to be significant opportunity for this approach in many other countries.