The SMART 5-A-DAY app is available in the Google Play Store for Android phones from December 29, 2022. It tells users whether they are eating the right portion sizes, as well as the right foods, to meet the recommended guidelines from Health Authorities in the United Kingdom.
The SMART 5-A-DAY app tells the user whether they have consumed a full or partial portion, what is needed to make up a full portion, and keeps a running tally of their progress to 5 a day. Image credit: Bournemouth University.
“Almost everyone knows they should eat five a day,” said Bournemouth University’s Professor Katherine Appleton.
“But when we looked a little further, it was clear that a lot of people did not know what counts towards the target, they did not know what a portion size is, and many did not realize that they needed to eat five different things.”
“Our studies also showed that lower knowledge was associated with lower consumption of fruits and vegetables.”
According to the researchers, only a third of adults, and 12% of eleven to eighteen-year-olds eat the recommended amount.
The SMART-5-A-DAY app has been created specifically to help people understand portion sizes and see how the amounts of fruits and vegetables that they eat contribute towards their daily target.
Users select the fruit or vegetable they have just eaten and will then be asked to enter how much of it they ate.
The app will then tell them whether that amount made up a full or partial portion and how much more would be needed to take it up to a full portion.
It also keeps a running total of their progress towards the five a day target.
“What is unique about this app is that as well as tracking daily fruit and vegetable intake, it teaches people about portion size, so they get to the point where they know what they need to eat themselves,” Professor Appleton said.
“We think this will be an effective tool to improve people’s diets for the long term, rather than simply for the short period that they use the app.”
Published in the journal JMIR Mhealth Uhealth, a study of an earlier prototype version found that it had some benefits to users’ eating habits and their understanding of what is needed to reach the daily recommended intake.
The new version incorporates several updates from feedback after the prototype trial, which the researchers hope will lead to bigger changes in eating behaviors among its users.
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K.M. Appleton et al. 2019. An Interactive Mobile Phone App (SMART 5-A-DAY) for Increasing Knowledge of and Adherence to Fruit and Vegetable Recommendations: Development and Pilot Randomized Controlled Trial. JMIR Mhealth Uhealth 7 (11): e14380; doi: 10.2196/14380
