Apps improve nutritional behaviour and health

11-Dec-2019 - Germany

Around two billion people worldwide are overweight or obese. Because overweight is associated with both physical and mental health consequences and enormous economic costs, it is considered one of the greatest health problems of our time. Psychologists at the University of Konstanz and the German Institute of Nutrition Research have come to the conclusion in a survey that mobile interventions using smartphone apps can do a good job here. Their overview work, which includes the currently available individual studies in the field of nutrition, confirms that the apps examined have a positive effect on nutritional behaviour, body weight and various physical health indicators such as cholesterol levels. The study is presented in the scientific journal Obesity Reviews.

The benefits of app-based mobile interventions are numerous

apps that are used by people who want to change their eating habits, often working with images and information. For example, users take a photo of their food or log it using an app, which then provides feedback on calories and nutrients. The benefits of app-based mobile interventions are numerous - including the ability to intervene in "real life" and "real time" and reach many people directly. After all, there are more than five billion smartphones worldwide. At the same time, app-based interventions have the potential to respond to individual, target group-specific user needs through interactivity.

In the working groups Psychological Diagnostics and Health Psychology of Prof. Dr. Britta Renner and General and Biological Psychology of Prof. Dr. Harald Schupp, 41 scientific intervention studies were evaluated which examined nutritional apps for their effectiveness. About 6,300 women and men were included in the meta-analysis via the individual studies. The age range is from 14 to 68 years with an average age of 41 years. "App-based mobile interventions have been shown to be effective both in changing dietary behavior and in reducing weight and improving nutrition-related health parameters," the authors summarize.

Effective for both patients and healthy users The apps were effective for both patients and healthy users - and thus for broad health promotion in very different user groups. The scientists also looked at the strategies used by the approximately 30 different apps to change the behaviour of their users. Although the visual appearance of the apps is quite different, they essentially use only four different strategies to change behaviour: setting goals, giving feedback, providing social support and imparting knowledge. This applies to both the commercial apps available on the market and those developed in the scientific context, which do not differ systematically in their efficacy.

The study shows that mobile interventions have a high potential, but that at the same time the possibilities of mobile technology are still far from exhausted.

Note: This article has been translated using a computer system without human intervention. LUMITOS offers these automatic translations to present a wider range of current news. Since this article has been translated with automatic translation, it is possible that it contains errors in vocabulary, syntax or grammar. The original article in German can be found here.

Original publication

Karoline Villinger, Deborah R. Wahl, Heiner Boeing, Harald T. Schupp, Britta Renner: The effectiveness of app‐based mobile interventions onnutrition behaviours and nutrition‐related health outcomes: A systematic review and meta‐analysis.

https://www.yumda.com/en/news/1164070/apps-improve-nutritional-behaviour-and-health.html