Do Image-Assisted Mobile Applications Improve Dietary Habits, Knowledge, and Behaviours in Elite Athletes? A Pilot Study

To date, there has been a paucity of research on optimal ways to educate and promote dietary behavioural change within athletes. Optimising athlete nutrition is fundamental to reaching peak performance and maintaining athlete wellbeing. MealLogger(®) is a smartphone application that incorporates the use of an image-based food record and social-media functionality to provide in-application personalised feedback to individuals or groups, peer-support, and a platform to deliver nutrition education material. This study measured the feasibility of MealLogger(®) within New Zealand elite male field hockey players (n = 17) aged 18–20 to increase athlete knowledge and nutrition promoting behaviours. During a six-week intervention, participants were instructed to log images of their meals three days per week and they received individualised dietetic feedback on logged meals. Weekly nutrition-education fact-sheets and videos were delivered through the application. Nutrition knowledge increased moderately from baseline (%Pre 54.7 ± 14.3; %Post 61.1 ± 11.45, p = 0.01). Participants report a highly positive experience of application use (8/10) with 82.3% attempting to make positive changes in dietary behaviours based on in-app education. All participants preferred this method to traditional methods of dietary analysis. Using image-based applications such as MealLogger(®) is an effective approach to monitor dietary intake and deliver education to optimise the nutritional behaviours of elite athletes.