Usage of Mobile Applications or Mobile Health Technology to Improve Diet Quality in Adults

Abstract

The use of mobile applications for dietary purposes has dramatically increased along with the consistent development of mobile technology. Assessing diet quality as a dietary pattern or an indicator across key food groups in comparison to those recommended by dietary guidelines is useful for identifying optimal nutrient intake. This systematic review aims to explore mobile applications and their impact on the diet quality of the user. The electronic databases of The Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (Cinahl), The American Psychological Association’s (APA Psycinfo), and PubMed were systematically searched for randomised and non-randomised controlled trials to retrieve papers from inception to November 2021. Ten studies with 1638 participants were included. A total of 5342 studies were retrieved from the database searches, with 10 articles eligible for final inclusion in the review. The sample sizes ranged from 27 to 732 participants across the included studies, with 1638 total participants. The ratio of female to male participants in the studies was 4:1. The majority of the mobile applications or M-health interventions were used to highlight dietary health changes (six studies), with the remainder used to reduce weight or blood sugar levels (four studies). Each study used a different measure to quantify diet quality. Studies were either assessed by diet quality scoring or individual dietary assessment, of the ten studies, six studies reported an improvement in diet quality following diet-related mobile application use. Mobile applications may be an effective way to improve diet quality in adults; however, there is a need for more targeted and longer-term studies that are expressly designed to investigate the impact using mobile applications has on diet quality.