Effect of diamond application on dietary intake and BMI among over nutrition female college student in Malang city, Indonesia: a quasi-experiment study

Abstract

Recently, using mobile applications for assisting weight loss programs is a common trend. However, the overnutrition rate is increasing every year. This research aims to develop and investigate the effect of Diet Monitoring (Diamond) application on dietary intake and BMI among overnutrition female college students in Malang City, Indonesia. Using 2 phases, this study used a cross-sectional study for phase I developing the app and a quasi-experiment for phase II investigating the effect of the application. 217 respondents were involved in phase I and 123 participants in phase II. The measurement tools were Tanita DC-360, and ZT-120 Health Scale, including an online questionnaire. In addition, the statistical analysis in this study was using Chi-square, Independent T-test, Dependent t-test, Mann Whitney U-test, Spearman Rho’s test, and Binary logistic. Phase I showed results that 12.8% of survey participants were overnutrition female university students, 87.10% of phase I respondents used Android, and 37.30% of them had meals three times per day. In addition, 121 cuisine menus, 27 snacks, and 22 sweet beverages were collected in this phase as an application food database. For phase II, the results showed that the intervention and control groups had similar baseline data (p value>0.05). After 8 weeks of intervention, it depicted protein intake and BMI were significantly different in the intervention group while for a comparison group, the significant differences were fat, protein and total calorie (p-value<0.05). In addition, the result presented that carbohydrate (p-value=0.042), protein (p-value<0.000), total calorie (p-value=0.014) and BMI (p-value=0.002) were significantly different between both groups. Lastly, the Spearman test depicted that there was a significant correlation between assessing a “meal diary” feature with fat intake and total calories among Diamond application participants. The more the users use this meal diary feature, the lower their fat and total intake consumption. In the conclusion, the Diamond application can be an effective alternative solution to assist people in managing their dietary intake.