Inspiration
Nutrition Application to help families make smart and healthy choices when purchasing food in the grocery stores.
How it works
This project seeks to develop a Nutrition Application (“App”) to help individuals and families make smart and healthy choices when purchasing foods in grocery stores, using the readily available technology of Smart Phones. The App will be developed in Spanish and English and will be easy to download and use, and affordable. It will create a list of foods and beverages to purchase in the supermarket tailored to the composition and characteristics of the individual/family, within a specified budget. This grocery list will follow the US Dietary Guidelines, which focuses on healthy eating, so it will indirectly help promote a healthy weight. In addition, it will provide examples of locally adjusted menus to prepare with this list. This
MyNutriCart is completely novel, as there are no available Apps to specifically do this currently in the market.
This app will take into consideration the following variables:
Family size: this App will ask clients to input the number of members in their family, and their age, gender, and life stage, such as pregnancy or lactation, as nutritional requirements vary according to these. Often individuals do not know what to purchase to meet the needs of everyone in their family. For example, adolescents have higher needs for calcium as they are growing; similarly with the other important life stages (infancy/childhood, adolescence, adulthood and post-menopausal status and older age.
Health conditions: this App will ask clients to input their history of health conditions such as diabetes, hypertension, dyslipidemia and cardiovascular diseases. These are the leading causes of morbidity. The App will recommend to purchase food options low in sugar, salt and saturated fat, to follow the current health professionals’ recommendations for these. This is important as most individuals do not know how to read labels or to identify such foods from the large variety available in the stores. This App will also ask clients to input any allergies, such as peanuts and gluten, to help identify the appropriate foods to purchase, and therefore, help prevent life-threatening events.
Information on the US Dietary Guidelines: the App will have the data on the recommendations from the US Dietary Guidelines, the official recommendations for US and PR. This is a unique aspect of this App. These guidelines recommend a number of servings from each food group, based on age and gender. The food groups are: fruits, vegetables, dairy products, proteins, grains and cereals, fats and oils, and water. These recommendations are designed to meet each individual’s nutritional requirements for calories, macronutrients (protein, carbohydrates, fat) and micronutrients (vitamins and minerals) while promoting a healthy weight. For example, a14 year-old adolescent boy has a higher calcium requirement; therefore, the guidelines recommend 4 servings of reduced-fat dairy products daily to meet this higher requirement. Although these guidelines are readily available to all individuals and many health professionals use them to teach individuals to eat healthier, individuals often do not know which foods and beverages to purchase to follow these guidelines.
Budget: the App will ask input about the food budget and the number of meals this shopping event is intended for, to calculate the total amount of each food to purchase to follow the recommended guidelines for that period of time. This is a key and unique component of the App, which will take into account one of the most important limitations that people face when deciding which product to buy, particularly when purchasing fruits and vegetables, as these are perceived too expensive and perishable. For example, if the budget is very low and the family size is large, the App will recommend purchasing frozen fruits and vegetables instead of the fresh versions. Based on the season and offers, the frozen versions are less expensive while providing all the key nutrients. This App will also help confirm that consuming fruits and vegetables can be fit into a tight budget. This may result in limiting the purchase of less healthy (often more energy-dense) foods and beverages. Therefore, this App will help clients apply the concept of home economy.
Discount information from the main grocery stores’ shoppers: we will use the weekly online shoppers, if the sale items are among the recommended items. This information will optimize the client’s available budget for each purchasing event. The App will use the resulting economy to recommend clients to purchase some products fresh instead of frozen and individualized packaged products instead of the whole bag (ideally for preparing lunch boxes).
Season: the App will include information on seasonal availability for fruits and vegetables grown in US and PR and will recommend choosing alternative fresh products produced locally, which are often at a lower price due to its high availability. This has the potential to help local farmers and positively impact the local economy.
The App algorithm will gather this information and provide each individual a grocery list with the specific foods and their amounts to purchase for that shopping event. It will also include healthy snacks for school children, if applicable, and provide simple and easy (printable) menu examples on how to incorporate these healthy foods, taking into account the typical dietary patterns. For example, in PR it will suggest to purchase rice and beans, but it will recommend healthier options such as brown rice and reduced portions.
No other App includes all these features together in one same App (based on our market research), thereby proving its novelty and uniqueness. The current available Apps in nutrition are geared toward helping individuals track and estimate portion sizes and caloric needs, providing general nutrition data on foods, providing nutrition information for various conditions, allergies and for athletes or vegetarians, helping individuals shop healthier by scanning foods, helping cook healthier, helping choose a healthier meal when dinning outside, and calculating their BMI, cardiovascular risk and their healthy weight goal. However, there are no Apps that translate all this information into a practical grocery list and menu ideas, while taking into consideration budgetary constraints and particular needs of families.
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