Automatic academic: working myself out of a job

Guest post by Emma Foster, Lecturer in Public Health Nutrition, Human Nutrition Research Centre, Newcastle University

Since I started working in dietary research I’ve been fascinated by how and why people misreport their dietary intake. Lots of excellent research (by others) has gone into understanding how the hassle of recording food intake, problems with memory and attention (if you are busy doing something else at the same time you may not be paying attention to what you are eating) along with social-desirability bias (am I really going to admit to the nutritionist interviewing me how many doughnuts I ate yesterday!) together tend to result in an under-estimate of energy intake and an over-estimate of those foods seen to be “healthy”.

Much of my research has focused on how we can make it less of a burden and perhaps even an enjoyable experience for volunteers taking part in nutrition research studies. I developed food photographs for portion size estimation with children, so participants don’t need to weigh everything their child eats….and more importantly doesn’t eat but ends up wearing!

Food photographs estimate portion size with children, so participants don’t need to weigh everything their child eats (or ends up wearing!)

More recently I’ve been developing an online 24-hr recall system, which sometimes feels like I’m making myself and other nutrition researchers surplus to requirements! In the “olden days”, when I first joined the Human Nutrition Research Centre at Newcastle University, all dietary data was collected by a researcher who went out to people’s homes to interview them about their dietary intake (something I really quite miss). This was followed by day after day sitting at a computer linking the foods and drinks reported to food composition data and weights (which I don’t miss quite as much!). Now with the online recall we are able to collect the data remotely. We send people a URL and login details and the computer system does the rest. It takes them through the previous day, asking for details on foods consumed, getting people to estimate portion size using photographs and checking for forgotten items like butter on toast or sugar in tea. The system automatically does the linking to the food composition data and the weights consumed and the researcher can download the data as soon as the volunteer has submitted their recall.

More beans please. A screenshot from INTAKE24

But surely it doesn’t do as good a job as a highly skilled nutrition researcher such as myself….right? Well it’s not actually that far off! When compared with a traditional face-to-face interview with 180 people the system was found to underestimate energy intake by just 1% on average and average intakes of protein, carbohydrate, fat, vitamins and minerals were all within 4% of the interviewer-led recall. Perhaps most amazingly people reported enjoying completing the system!

So if you would like to measure food intake as part of your research but can’t afford to employ a nutritionist/dietitian as part of your research team (we’re not cheap) then have a look at our demo on https://intake24.co.uk/demo and drop us an email at support@intake24.co.uk and we can set you up a survey straight away – and it really is free.

From the office to Eastern Africa: how digital technologies can be used to assess diet

Guest post by Emma Foster, Lecturer in Public Health Nutrition, Human Nutrition Research Centre, Newcastle University

Life in academia can be tough at times. It can be difficult to switch off, the list of tasks can seem never ending and just when you think things are going to quieten down along comes that call for proposals that you simply can’t miss.

I’ve worked at Newcastle University for almost 20 years now and throughout that time my research has focused on improving how we measure dietary intake. In the early years this involved going into school and talking to children and parents, which was always good fun. More recently we’ve been working with adults developing online systems for measuring intake along with colleagues at Open Lab. The work is really interesting and I’m enormously proud of the system we have produced but life is predominantly office based now.

Earlier this year though, my enthusiasm for work was suddenly re-ignited with a slight change in focus for my research. For 12 days in February I left behind my 6 year old son (bad mummy!) and my husband and headed off to do some research looking at how digital technologies could be used to assess dietary intake in Africa. Along with my colleague - research associate Maisie Rowland - I headed to Tanzania to learn about the food environment there, looking at the range of foods available, and the way things are cooked, served and eaten. We also looked at the uptake of technology such as use of smartphones and internet access. We started our visit in Moshi near Kilimanjaro (every time I say Kilimanjaro I still break into a smile). The weather there was lovely and warm and the people were too. We’d been put in touch with a school teacher, Amina who showed us around two primary schools and one secondary school in the area. Seeing the cooking facilities at the schools was really eye opening. The schools all cooked over wood fires.

I was amazed at the secondary school kitchen; this was what I had expected to find in the homes in poorer rural communities but not in a large (700+ pupils) secondary school. Yet the staff managed to cook enough food to feed all of the students and had taken the time to provide information for us on the common local foods.

Every day for school lunch the children got maize and beans, one of the schools added oil to the mixture to make sure the children got some fat in their diet. Children brought a bowl, plate or other container (some had margarine tubs) and most ate with their hands. The children ate their food outside. Amina invited us over for dinner one evening. “I thought I’d cook you banana stew and elephant leg” she said, monitoring our faces for a reaction. Politely we said “that sounds lovely” but we clearly looked a bit worried before Amina roared with laughter and told us that elephant leg was a vegetable….it just got its name because it apparently looks a bit like one!

Before we left Moshi we got to tour the local food markets, where people buy the majority of their food. There was very little in the way of pre-packaged foods consumed.

Our next stop was Dar es Salaam where we worked with the Tanzanian Food and Nutrition Centre (TFNC). We conducted two workshops, one with nutritionists, dietitians, food technologists and public health workers at the TFNC, which Maisie and I ran in English, and one with a rural community group which the TFNC researchers ran in Swahili. Through the workshops we gathered lots of information about the foods consumed and how these differed between regions, the time of year, celebrations and droughts, and how people would share recipes and consume foods. We learned that African power cuts can last a whole day - the workshop at the TFNC was done in 35 degree heat with the power (and therefore air conditioning) off! We discovered that the foods we were served for breakfast at the hotel were usually only reserved for celebrations for the local population.

We took our research very seriously and ate at a wide variety of restaurants, cafes and street food stalls. The food over there was really tasty. For breakfast every day we had an amazing beef stew that we got the recipe for. I’ve tried to re-create it but mine isn’t quite up to scratch, I think it’s probably to do with the way that they rear the cows rather than my cooking skills....

We plan to work with the staff at TFNC to put in a proposal to the Global Challenges Research Fund with the aim to develop a technology based method of assessing dietary intake that will enable them to run what would be the first National dietary survey for Tanzania.

….Now back to the office for some proposal writing to get us back out there. Next time I might even take the family with me!

52 weeks in public health research, part 52

Posted by Emma Foster, Amelia Lake, Lorraine McSweeney and Mark Welford

So this is it, we have reached the final week of our 52 week public health picture project. But what insights has it provided into the everyday lives of public health researchers? Find out in a blog post coming soon. A big thank you to all those who contributed their images.

Happy New Year!

Posted by Emma Foster: Not a New Year resolution as a) it seems silly to start the day after a big party and b) now is when I have a bit more time to exercise... So starting tomorrow this cross trainer is going to be getting much more use....and not just for drying clothes!

Posted by Amelia Lake: Less of a resolution more of an ambition! No more trainers on the bike - it's time to look like a pro... and possibly get a few knocks and bruises in the process!

Posted by Lorraine McSweeney: I recently attended a graduation ceremony at Newcastle University to receive my doctorate award. For the first time in the congregation history the PhD titles were announced during the ceremony; mine being 'Prevention of obesity: exploring strategies for intervention in preschool'. The ceremony was attended by my supervisor and Fuse Director Ashley Adamson. Also in attendance that day was television journalist and newsreader Angela Rippon who received an honorary degree for her charity work in dementia.

Posted by Mark Welford: Fundraisers braving the North Sea to earn money for their favourite charity in the Annual Boxing Day dip. A bit of physical activity after the Christmas day indulgence and the beginning of a New Year's resolution?