Image-Based Dietary Intake Assessment Ability of Dietetic Students and Interns

Graduation date: 2017Image-based dietary intake assessment (IBDIA) is a new way by which the accuracy of dietary assessment can be improved through the use of digital images of food. The ability of nutrition and dietetics students and interns to accurately interpret images for diet intake assessment is currently unknown. An online survey of 114 nutrition and dietetics students and interns from the United States and Australia was completed to assess IBDIA ability with common American foods and determine the greatest challenges to accuracy. Educational and other experiences were assessed to determine the types of experiences that led to greater image interpretation accuracy. Students were able to successfully identify foods 79.5% of the time. Portion size estimations for a second set of foods were less accurate, with only 38% of estimates falling within ±10% of the ground truth weight. Students stated that general difficulty with perceiving portion sizes made quantifying foods from images difficult. Having experience cooking at home from a recipe, frequent measuring of portions, and having a food preparation or cooking laboratory class were associated with enhanced accuracy in IBDIA. Future training of dietetics students should incorporate more food-based portion size training to improve portion size estimations while performing IBDIA