Smartphone Apps Improve Diet Tracking, Study Finds

Keeping track of what you eat throughout the day is significantly important if you’re trying to lose weight.

Here’s one strategy to really make this effort count: use your smartphone.

Researchers from Arizona State University have found that people who used their smartphones to track their diet data kept better tabs on what they ate than those using transitional paper and pen, according to a news release.

“… we found that participants who monitored their diet with either the smartphone app or the memo function were more likely to persist in the study and missed fewer days of entering dietary data, compared to those monitoring via paper and pencil,” said study author Christopher Wharton, associate professor of nutrition at ASU’s School of Nutrition and Health Promotion. “This may be due to ease of use.”

“At the individual level, dietary self-monitoring has been identified as one of the most successful tools for managing body weight, so this is an interesting finding,” said researcher Carol Johnston, professor of nutrition at the school.

According to the Pew Internet Project, more than half of American adults own a smartphone and almost a third of them “can’t imagine living” without the device, the news release states. Researchers used the app “Lose It,” for the study, but many different weight loss apps exist today.

Although those who used paper and pen had twice the number of missing days as the group using the app “Lose It,” the quality of their diet was the same. Registered Dietitians can help people understand nutritional information as it relates to weight loss and health.

“Therefore, it was concluded that food and nutrition professionals should consider using app technology in conjunction with dietary counseling for weight management,” the release states.

The study was published in the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior.

Source: Arizona State University news release

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