Are We Healthier Together? Two Strategies for Supporting Macronutrient Assessment Skills and How the Crowd Can Help (or Not)

Abstract

Learning macronutrient assessment skills can support improved health outcomes and overall wellbeing. We conducted two Mechanical Turk studies to investigate how users might benefit from the crowd's input in macronutrient assessment education. We first determined whether the wisdom of the crowd alone would provide users with enough insight to arrive at accurate macronutrient estimates. Next, we tested two methods of teaching macronutrient assessment skills (Comparison and Decomposition) and analyzed their effectiveness. Results from these studies indicate that while the crowd alone may not be sufficient to support this type of education, users may yet benefit from access to community-generated photos and labels while they use either the Comparison or Decomposition strategy.