FoodSwitch: A Mobile Phone App to Enable Consumers to Make Healthier - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Affiliated with Sydney, AUSTRALIA | Beijing, CHINA | Hyderabad, INDIA | London, UK FoodSwitch: A Mobile Phone App to Enable Consumers to Make Healthier Food Choices and Crowdsourcing of National Food Composition Data Elizabeth Dunford, PhD Carolina Population Center , UNC & The George Institute for Global Health

Health Benefits of Improving the Food Supply • Poor diet major contributor to chronic disease worldwide • Current food supply has excess levels of total fat, saturated fat, sugar and salt in large serves of energy-dense foods “Even small changes in • Driving epidemics of obesity, high key constituents of the blood pressure, diabetes and dyslipidaemia , leading to ↑ heart food supply have the attacks, stroke and cancer potential to produce enormous health gains” 2

Health Benefits of Improving the Food Supply  Get individuals to make healthier choices or  Change the environment that people live in (so they can’t help but make healthier choices) 3

Outstanding scientific credibility The importance of monitoring the healthiness of “branded” products 4

Example – same brand in same country Sodium per serve: 155mg Sodium per serve: 55mg Product 65% less salt! Product higher in lower in salt 5 salt 5 5

Example – same product in different countries Product higher Product lower in salt in salt USA : Sodium per 100g: 720mg 31% less salt! Australia: Sodium per 100g: 550mg 6 6 6

Example – white bread – different brands, same country Sodium per 100g: 400mg Sodium per 100g: 600mg 35% less salt! Brand higher Brand in salt lower in salt 7 7 7

Typical Australian daily food intake • By switching to different brands of processed foods, 5g of salt can be removed from the daily diet 8

Global Food Monitoring Group Aim To bring together data on nutrient information (or lack thereof) for processed foods that can be used to drive national and international improvements in the food supply Status • 31 countries involved (2/3 are LMICs) • >250,000 individual branded food items 9

Opportunity: harnessing smartphone technology for data collection iPhone or Android app downloaded App used to scan product barcode in- store App used to take a photo of the front of package App used to take a photo of the product’s nutrition info 10

Photos of food products uploaded and nutrition information entered into the FMG database Photos stored in Amazon cloud Photos downloaded to central data entry Photos uploaded system, data entered from smartphone by team in India 11 11

The George Institute’s Food and Beverage Information Content Management System (FBI CMS)

Product data entered

Branded food products currently in database Country Number of products Australia 80,000+ New Zealand 16,429 Costa Rica 5,079 South Africa 12,000+ China 17,652 India 8,700 UK 100,000+ Netherlands 4,000 USA 18,000+ TOTAL 250,000+ 14 14

Group protocols published 15 15

UK and Australia comparison Global branded food database was used to compare sodium levels in UK and Australia Publication : Ni Mhurchu C, Capelin C, Dunford EK, Webster JL, Neal BC, Jebb SA. Sodium content of processed foods in the United Kingdom: analysis of 44,000 foods purchased by 21,000 households. Am J Clin Nutr. 2010:93(3);594-600. 16 16

In India, information on food labels was used to examine the presence of labelling Figure shows proportion of products from major food companies meeting local (grey) and CODEX (black) requirements for nutrition labelling Publication : Dunford EK, Guggilla RK, Ratneswaran A, Maulik PK, Webster JL, Neal BC. The adherence of packaged food products in Hyderabad, India with national and international nutritional labelling guidelines. Asia Pac J Clin Nutr. 2015;24(3):540-5 17 17

Changes in the sodium content of bread in Australia and New Zealand Changes in the sodium content of bread 2007 – 2010 Publication : Dunford E, Eyles H, Ni Mhurchu C, Webster J, Neal B. Changes in the sodium content of bread in Australia and New Zealand between 2007 and 2010 – implications for policy. Med J Aust 2011;195(4). 18 18

Publish publish publish…. 19

Outstanding scientific credibility How do we use these data to empower the consumer? 20

Reading food labels 21 21

Reading food labels 22 22

The problem with food labels 23 23

Review of Food Labelling Law and Policy 24 24

Traffic Light Label Solution HIGH LOW MED 25 25 25

FoodSwitch • Poor diet major contributor to chronic disease worldwide • Current food supply has excess levels of nutrients total fat, saturated fat, sugar and salt in large serves of energy- dense foods. • Driving global epidemics of obesity, high blood pressure, diabetes and dyslipidaemia, leading to ↑ heart attacks, stroke and cancer 26 26

FoodSwitch • Poor diet major contributor to chronic disease worldwide • Current food supply has excess levels of nutrients total fat, saturated fat, sugar and salt in large serves of energy- dense foods. • Driving global epidemics of • 65% of Australians own a obesity, high blood pressure, smartphone diabetes and dyslipidaemia, • 76% use their phones to leading to ↑ heart attacks, get recommendations for stroke and cancer health and other lifestyle- related factors 27 27

Post-launch development  SaltSwitch  GlutenSwitch November 2012 May 2013 29

Post-launch development  FatSwitch  SugarSwitch  EnergySwitch 30

Other Countries FoodSwitch UK HealthyFood Switch SA FoodSwitch NZ Launched Feb 2014 Launched Nov 2015 Launched Aug 2013  Launch plans: China (2015), India (2015), USA (2016), Switzerland (2016) Hong Kong (2017) 31

FoodSwitch recognition and outcomes More than 800,000 downloads More than 1,000,000 photos of new items sent in by users 32

Changes to Australian food labelling – Health Star Rating System The HSR system was developed through a collaborative process involving public health and consumer organisations, industry and government representatives. On June 27 2014 the government agreed that the HSR system should be implemented voluntarily over the next 5 years with a review of the progress of implementation after 2 years. 33

While we waited for the industry to adopt stars.……. + = 34

Health Star Rating mode Healthier choices can be shown in expanded view 35 35 35

36 36

Behind FoodSwitch 37

Monitoring food environments Process DATA COLLECTION DATA UTILISATION DATA PROCESSING Content Data Collector App Management Research outputs (monitoring data) System Data entry FoodSwitch App FoodSwitch App (crowd-source (consumer Data review data) education) Categorisation 38 38

The real power behind FoodSwitch: crowd-sourcing of data • Originally FoodSwitch Australia was launched with ~17,000 products (SKUs) • When products do not appear in the database, users are asked to help by taking 3 photographs – the front of the product, the nutrition information and the ingredients list – and send them to us. • In this way the database can be constantly updated and new products entered. • 26,000 photos sent in by FoodSwitch users in the first 2 days, and a minimum of 200 photos are sent in every day currently • - Database now includes >80,000 products 39 39

Crowd-sourced products in each country STARTED WITH… TO DATE HAS… COUNTRY 84,000+ 17,000 AUSTRALIA NEW ZEALAND 8,000 45,000+ 70,000 95,000+ UK 7,000 12,000+ SOUTH AFRICA 40 40

Crowd-sourcing data in FoodSwitch Crowd-sourcing process in FoodSwitch 41 41

Crowd-sourcing data in FoodSwitch Reporting incorrect product information in FoodSwitch 42 42

But what does this add up to?  How do we know whether there have been actual reductions in adverse nutrient levels in foods?  How do we know whether this has translated into healthier food purchases? 43 43

Do food labels influence food purchases? - Food Label Trial • Randomised trial with 2000 participants • The aim is to find out which type of label is best at helping people make healthier food and drink choices • Participants scan items they purchase and send in till receipts form grocery shops • Results will evaluate whether different label formats influenced foods purchased 44 44 44

Participants are randomised to one of 5 trial arms

Geographic coverage FoodSwitch has been launched 46 46 46 FoodSwitch is in development

Thank you! Contact details Email: edunford@email.unc.edu www.foodswitch.com.au www.foodswitch.co.uk www.foodswitch.co.nz www.foodswitch.co.za 47