Ecological Validation and Practical Challenges of Conducting Dietary Analysis in Athletic Individuals Using a Novel Remote Food Photography Method Mobile Phone Application

Charlie Roberts, Nicholas Gill, Brett A. Baxter, Stacy Sims

Research output: Contribution to JournalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Purpose: Dietary analysis is an important part of the sports nutrition practitioners’ role, however the ability to accurately collect and analyse dietary intake data is questionable. The remote food photography method (RFPM) has been proposed as a low-burden and potentially valid approach to collecting and interpreting dietary intake data. Preliminary research suggests this is valid in some athletic populations, however the ecological validation in real-life settings warrants further investigation.

Methods: Twenty athletic individuals completed simultaneous three-day RFPM diaries and weighed food diaries for the analysis of energy, protein, carbohydrate, and fat. Participants were required to provide details alongside provided photographs that did not include food weights to allow for the estimation of nutrient intake from minimally invasive photographs and descriptions.

Results: RFPM demonstrated non-significant random and systematic error against the weighed food diary for energy, protein, carbohydrate, and fat at -20.0 ± 455.5kcal, 3.2 ± 35.4g, -12.4 ± 49.3g and 2.3 ± 26.8g, respectively. Coefficient of variation suggest acceptable agreement between RFPM and weighed food diary for energy and poor agreement for protein, carbohydrate, and fat. Considerable variability is observed in the individual calculated values, with the least and greatest difference being 0% and -83.0%, respectively.

Conclusion: The results indicate that the RFPM may be an ecologically valid tool for the collection and analysis of dietary intake data on a group level; on an individual basis, data and subsequent recommendations based on this must be applied with caution.
Original languageEnglish
Article number6
Pages (from-to)90-96
Number of pages7
JournalJournal of Science in Sport and Exercise
Volume6
Issue number1
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 9 Feb 2023

Bibliographical note

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

Data Access Statement

The datasets generated and/or analysed during the current study are available at: 10.24339/66b623b4-8b01-4698-ba06-7324dcfad73e.

Keywords

  • Dietary analysis
  • Remote food photography method
  • Practical validation
  • Practical challenges

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