Improving Heart disease risk through quality-focused diet logging: pre-post study of a diet quality tracking app

Abstract

Diet-tracking mobile apps have been effective in behavior change. At the same time, quantity-focused diet tracking (e.g., calorie counting) can be time-consuming and tedious, leading to unsustained adoption. Diet Quality--focusing on high-quality dietary patterns rather than quantifying diet into calories--has shown effectiveness in improving heart disease risk. Healthy Heart Score (HHS) predicts 20-year cardiovascular risks based on quality-focused food category consumptions, rather than detailed serving sizes. No studies have examined how mobile health apps focusing on diet quality can bring promising results on health outcomes and ease of adoption. We designed a mobile app to support the HHS informed quality-focused dietary approach by enabling users to log simplified diet quality and view its real-time impact on future heart disease risks. Users were asked to log food categories that are the main predictors of HHS. We measured the apps feasibility and efficacy on improving individuals clinical and behavioral factors affecting future heart disease risks and app use. We recruited 38 overweight or obese participants at high heart disease risk, who used the app for 5 weeks and measured weight, blood sugar, and blood pressure, HHS, and Diet Score (DS) measuring diet quality at baseline and the fifth week of the intervention. The majority used the application every week (84%) and significantly improved DS and HHS at the fifth week (p<0.05), although only 10 participants (31%) checked their risk scores more than once. Other outcomes did not show significant changes. Our study showed logging simplified diet quality significantly improved dietary behavior. The participants were not interested in seeing HHS, and the participants perceived logging diet categories irrelevant to improving HHS as important. We discuss the complexities of addressing health risks, quantity vs. quality-based health monitoring, and incorporating secondary behavior change goals that matter to users when designing mobile health.