SoDiat Study
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Data-driven integration of emerging technologies to generate a Standardised and Objective Dietary Intake Assessment Tool - SoDiat
IRAS ID
321986
Contact name
Gary Frost
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Research Governance and Integrity Team, Imperial College Academic Health Science Centre (AHSC)
Duration of Study in the UK
4 years, 5 months, 1 days
Research summary
Your diet has a huge impact on your health and well-being and unhealthy diets are a major contributor to the development of a range of chronic health conditions, such as diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, and many cancers. The efficacy and impact of public health strategies aimed at addressing nutrition-related problems is consistently undermined by misreporting of dietary intake caused by our lack of tools to accurately assess and monitor dietary intakes and nutritional exposures e.g to monitor what people eat and drink and their nutritional status (e.g. amount of protein or calcium in their diets).
Self-reporting tools are traditionally used to capture information about an individual’s diet. These include, Food Frequency Questionnaires (FFQs), 24hr dietary recalls and food diaries. Reliance on these tools often results in a significant burden to study participants (e.g., recording everything they ate and drank over a period of time) and inaccurate reporting (for example, tools that rely on memory are prone to foods being forgotten, whereas food diaries are prone to people changing their diets for ease of reporting or to appear ‘healthier’). This study aims to address this problem. Specifically, the combination of three technologies will be tested (which individually improve diet assessment) alongside two online self-reporting dietary assessment tools.
1. Urine analysis which measures water soluble diet-derived substances (e.g., flavonoids from vegetables).
2. Blood sample analysis to determine longer-term consumption of some specific foods (e.g oily fish).
3. Micro-cameras with advanced image processing for food recognition and portion size estimation.
4. Online dietary assessment tools to self-report dietary intake for the previous 24 hours (Intake24) and the previous month (eNutri).REC name
London - Camden & Kings Cross Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
23/LO/0437
Date of REC Opinion
1 Jun 2023
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion