{"id":17141,"date":"2014-09-19T11:42:40","date_gmt":"2014-09-19T15:42:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/?p=17141"},"modified":"2014-09-22T00:14:53","modified_gmt":"2014-09-22T04:14:53","slug":"smartphones-may-aid-in-dietary-self-monitoring","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/2014\/09\/smartphones-may-aid-in-dietary-self-monitoring\/","title":{"rendered":"Smartphones may aid in dietary self-monitoring"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>From the Elsevier Health Sciences media release:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><a href=\"http:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/cellphone_texting.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-9595\" alt=\"phone at work\" src=\"http:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/cellphone_texting.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" \/><\/a>Smartphones have seen wide adoption among Americans in recent years <strong>because of their ease of use and adaptability<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>With that in mind, researchers from Arizona State University examined how smartphone use affected weight loss goals and determined that <strong>smartphones may offer users an advantage over traditional methods when tracking diet data<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>Roughly 83% of Americans now own a mobile phone and 45% own smartphones with Internet access. For this study, researchers recruited healthy, weight-stable adults and semirandomly divided them into groups based on their diet-tracking method. <strong>The groups consisted of those who used the &#8220;Lose It!&#8221; app, those who recorded dietary intake using the memo function of their smartphone, and those who used traditional paper and pencil to record their diet<\/strong>. Although smartphone use did not affect total weight loss among the 47 participants who completed the study, the researchers observed better diet tracking results among those in the smartphone-use groups.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Participants using a commercially available app more consistently entered complete days of dietary data compared with the paper-and-pencil group and also withdrew from the study less often than the other groups,&#8221; lead author Christopher Wharton, PhD, said. &#8220;<strong>It&#8217;s possible that app technology offers a less burdensome method for tracking data compared with traditional tools.<\/strong>&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The memo and paper-and-pencil groups reported twice the number of missing days as the group using the app, but diet quality was not improved among app users. Therefore, it was concluded that <strong>food and nutrition professionals should consider using app technology in conjunction with dietary counseling for weight management<\/strong>. Because little data about smartphone use as it relates to weight management and dieting is available, this study should help inform further research in this area.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From the Elsevier Health Sciences media release: Smartphones have seen wide adoption among Americans in recent years because of their ease of use and adaptability. With that in mind, researchers&#8230; <a class=\"read-more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/2014\/09\/smartphones-may-aid-in-dietary-self-monitoring\/\">Read more &raquo;<\/a><!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[353,336,348],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17141"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17141"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17141\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17147,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17141\/revisions\/17147"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}