(Paid) Research participation request on food information seeking!

[Aisha_Researcher]

Hi All,
I have t1D and am a researcher on the politics of technology. Myself and a t2D colleague from the University of Sheffield are looking into the shame and stigma around food and food-tracking technologies following the rise in eating disorders among diabetic people. We would love to know what technologies (apps/ others?) you use to help you track food in the survey below for the first stage of our research. In the future, we will be running focus groups to imagine differently designed technologies. If you have the time, fill out the survey on the poster below.

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfoO6peGuLSM6FSpDhPtFn70Gnhbj1FIyaeixEKf0EMtODHOQ/viewform


'This study has been approved by @Ieva DUK and is not affiliated with Diabetes UK.'

 

[mashedupmatt]

All done - only takes a minute - good luck with your research

 

[Aisha_Researcher]

All done - only takes a minute - good luck with your research

Thank you!!

 

[Inka]

A rare comment from me but that was a bit too short! It assumed any food-tracking would be to do with diabetes; didn’t distinguish diabetes types; and didn’t allow space to say anything extra.

I use food-tracking occasionally but none of that is because of my diabetes. As a Type 1, I eat a normal diet.

 

[SimonP]

This post was going to be short, but it has apparently become long, sorry!

I am T1 and I log everything I eat, this started as I wanted to do better predictive modelling than that contained in XDrip+ (which just takes quantity of carbs, without any cares about other macros which might affect things, and other extraneous factors such as exercise, etc.) so needed some data to start off with, with a plan to then develop an app which would integrate information on food eaten (quantity, macro content - for a stab at digestion modelling), however, while I've started said app a few times, there's never enough time (and Android changes by the time I get back to my last attempt), which is very frustrating.

Now that I've started, I've simply continued to log the data in a slightly time consuming fashion using an Android app called Diet Diary (which is now open source, but I originally selected it simply as it was free and I could directly export the data I'd entered, which is what I needed to be able to do offline post-processing.) The app is almost plain text data (exports a CSV), so I came up with a text tagging method to make post-processing less painful, though I've only tried to do a full post-processing run once some time ago, and it was moderately painful (though interesting) writing the parsing and data lookup code (MATLAB, though Python next time).

I had originally planned an all singing and dancing app with photos, barcode scanning, recipe generation and portion allocation (you add x, y & z ingredients to a meal, you split it n number of ways, this is how much each person gets) and importantly integration between the food and the glucose response data (so I could search for the last times I ate X and see what BG responses I got.)

An all singing and dancing app is in many ways the wrong way to handle this, I'm only really concerned with using the data to do the blood glucose modelling, so I should ideally leave the food logging part of the app to a different developer (or ideally many developers so one can chose which is preferred,) however, none of the extant logging apps share their data (even as a csv download) and what I'd need for this to work is that any logging app broadcasts a device-wide Android Intent containing information about the contents of a given entry, which can be picked up by my BG prediction app. The other slight issue is that to be able to do historic food look-ups and then compare with BG response, there needs to be some degree of integration. I'm not sure quite what the ideal app looks like.

In order to make some progress I have now reduced scope to just get the prediction app written (with algorithm plugins, as I don't know what will necessarily make a good algorithm, and it should be as easy as possible for people to try different ideas without the pain of a full recompile or indeed needing to involve me at all) and I will then have to deal with writing something to log food so there's a data source. Perhaps this Xmas (he says again!)

Anyway, sorry for the long post, perhaps not relevant to your research, but that's my background regarding logging food, etc. I'd be interested to hear the outcome of your research.

 

[littlevoice359]

I completed the survey, mainly out of curiosity as to what questions it contained. For my part, I developed my own solution as nothing I found out there in the marketplace did everything I needed. The closest was Diabetes:M, but their meal planner was impossible to use and the reports were quite confusing.
I now have a web app that lets me plan my meals, log my insulin use and keep track of all pertinent data (e.g, weight, BP, A1c, etc) in one place. Works like a charm and also lets me keep my .Net software skills current.

 

[Lucyr]

Surprised that it didn’t ask me why I have logged food. As it’s not because of diabetes it was to try and lose weight.

 

[Inka]

Surprised that it didn’t ask me why I have logged food. As it’s not because of diabetes it was to try and lose weight.

Exactly! The occasions when I’ve logged my food is when I need to put on weight or simply out of interest/concern when I’ve worried I’m eating too much fat or not enough protein or whatever - ie a general health reason.

Maybe it’s just me but I find it hard to believe many Type 1s use such apps. I know a small number in real life, spanning ages from child to retired person and not one of them uses an app to log food or ever has done.

 

[Lucyr]

Maybe it’s just me but I find it hard to believe many Type 1s use such apps. I know a small number in real life, spanning ages from child to retired person and not one of them uses an app to log food or ever has done.

I think the difference between logging food and looking up food is important too. Many T1s I know use apps to look up the nutritional information in food, but they don’t then log the food, just use the carb info and carry on.

 

[littlevoice359]

Personally, I have two reasons why I log my food:

1. It lets me see the effect, if any, of certain foods on blood sugar.
2. Logging happens automatically, by virtue of the way my meal planner software works.

The database behind my web application has a nutritional information table where I store ingredients. That way I don't have to look up nutritional information when I am cooking - only do that when I buy an ingredient I haven't used before.

Over the past years, being able to get increased accuracy in my carb counting, in addition to calculating fat and protein content, has helped me significantly reduce post-prandial spikes and/or lows. From time to time I take a look at summary nutritional information to check that my calorie intake is sufficient to maintain my weight and/or to check that I am getting enough protein (important for me since I cut way back on meat consumption).

 

[Lucyr]

Over the past years, being able to get increased accuracy in my carb counting, in addition to calculating fat and protein content, has helped me significantly reduce post-prandial spikes and/or lows.

You can be accurate at carb counting without using an app to log it, some may use paper

 

[Leadinglights]

You can be accurate at carb counting without using an app to log it, some may use paper

Simple can be better, It took a friend 45min to order 6 meals using the app at Wetherspoons, talk about a faff and very frustrating. We should have just gone to the bar to order but I think he just didn't want to be defeated by the tech.

 

[littlevoice359]

You can be accurate at carb counting without using an app to log it, some may use paper

Oh I started out using paper but it just didn't work for me. I found it inaccurate and really annoying. Plus, I am a software engineer who spent decades developing decision support systems, so writing my own software to take care of all the drudgery was a logical and fun thing for me to do. It lets me keep my software skills current and gives me a little more control over my diabetes, or at least the illusion of control. What can I say - I guess I'm kind of a geek 🙂

 

[rebrascora]

I don't use paper or an app and I only record my insulin on Libre (reader) plus the carbs I use for hypo treatments or similar small carb intake like before driving to push my levels up a bit, but not the carbs in my meals, as it doesn't seem like any benefit to me to do so.
I guestimate carbs in meals and just correct later as I need to do anyway for protein release.
Apps giving carb content to one decimal place amuse me when the figures they quote are mostly guestimates anyway.

 

[Inka]

@littlevoice359 It sounds like you enjoy your system and good on you for that. Long live geekiness 🙂

For me, I find any kind of analysis, apart from in the immediate aftermath of something, pretty pointless. Like most Type 1s, I can eat the same breakfast two days in a row and get completely different blood sugar results. This isn’t because I counted the carbs wrong, but because one of the other eleventy-million things that can affect blood sugar intervened. No app would sort that. More than that, an app might actually make things worse by assuming I’d rise like the last time I ate that breakfast and so telling me to have more insulin.

We’re not machines and control of Type 1 is a very inexact science. Type 1 takes up enough of my headspace without adding extra stuff on top.

 

[SimonP]

It would be useful to give bounds to the effects of a given meal + insulin combo though (even all the easy things fixed, and only the other 99-odd factors which we can't control or even measure having an effect) - this is my motivation, i.e. to give probabilistic trajectories of BG (which can then be narrowed once more CGM data comes in).

Agreed re headspace, but then this is a good reason to note things down (for me at least). It's just the way I am though and we're all different!

 

[martindt1606]

One of the "benefits" of the Dexcom / Tslim integration is that it comes with the Glooko App. You can see blood glucose, meals, exercise, basal suspensions, control IQ boluses.....all in one place. Same information available to the DSN so they have the option to analyse before clinic.

 

[nonethewiser]

@littlevoice359 It sounds like you enjoy your system and good on you for that. Long live geekiness 🙂

For me, I find any kind of analysis, apart from in the immediate aftermath of something, pretty pointless. Like most Type 1s, I can eat the same breakfast two days in a row and get completely different blood sugar results. This isn’t because I counted the carbs wrong, but because one of the other eleventy-million things that can affect blood sugar intervened. No app would sort that. More than that, an app might actually make things worse by assuming I’d rise like the last time I ate that breakfast and so telling me to have more insulin.

We’re not machines and control of Type 1 is a very inexact science. Type 1 takes up enough of my headspace without adding extra stuff on top.

Wow great reply & totally agree with your points @Inka

Very rarely made notes in all my years of type 1, never wanted diabetes to take up more head space than it already does. Plus if honest I would never look back at them notes.

 

[Aisha_Researcher]

A rare comment from me but that was a bit too short! It assumed any food-tracking would be to do with diabetes; didn’t distinguish diabetes types; and didn’t allow space to say anything extra.

I use food-tracking occasionally but none of that is because of my diabetes. As a Type 1, I eat a normal diet.

Thanks for the feedback! It is very short, we only wanted to get a 'lay of the landscape' for what people are using - the next stage of this research will be interviews and focus groups with diabetic people about their experiences so we'll hopefully capture experiences in more depth at that point!

 

[Aisha_Researcher]

As a person living with diabetes for over 30 years and researcher at the University of Cambridge where I work on Desirable Digitisation, I am excited to invite participants (people living with diabetes in the UK) to take part in focus groups to talk about your experience of carbohydrate tracking technology, and if we - the people concerned - could imagine something better. Myself and a colleague from the University of Sheffield have been continually frustrated by the apps available to us for cabohydrate tracking and how this part of diabetes mangement is still really burdensome - so we have undertaken a study to actually talk to people living with diabetes from across the UK to ask what we would like to see - what features would make our lives easier, and what is just not helpful? If you are interested in sharing your views and experience of food tracking technology please fill out the expression of interest linked in the poster below - and we'll get back to you asap!
If QR codes aren't your thing, a link to the expression of interest survey is below, and includes detials of our researhcer contact emails if you have any further questions!
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1...y6w0akanKmCVYKPblVswmscHg/viewform?usp=dialog



This study has been approved by @Ieva DUK and is not affiliated with Diabetes UK!