Development of Mobile-Accessible Nutritional System to Improve Healthy Food Choices

Vladislav Vintsarevich ； Gitesh Raikundalia ； Michael Mathai ； Andrew McAinch ； Carla Battaglia ； Steven Pereira

《Research Journal of Applied Sciences, Engineering and Technology》 3卷9期 (2011/09) Pp. 1034-1047

並列摘要

The aim of this study was to develop a Web-based mobile system providing useful nutritional advice to consumers. This system encourages healthier food habits for sufferers of hypertension or diabetes. In the modern day society, the issues of globalization, consumers' choice and other recently introduced phenomena such as the Internet and the mobile phone are becoming more prominent. Making a decision to buy a product, in the present, can be rather a challenge for many consumers. This can mean that consumers eat foods such as breads, breakfast cereals and biscuit products that they know little about. In this paper, the authors developed software aimed at helping hypertensive and diabetic patients to improve their overall wellbeing. The health of the sufferers of these ailments can usually be improved by healthy diets. After the development of the system, a usability experiment involving interviews with the participants was conducted. Based on the analysis of the feedback a number of relevant findings arose, such as some participants suggested that the system was useful for monitoring their diets. However, few participants were prepared to change their shopping behaviours due to some issues like lack of the relatively small number of consumer products in the nutritional database, which need to be addressed in the future work on the system.

並列關鍵字

Diabetes ； hypertension ； mobile access ； nutritional database