Personalized Support for Healthy Nutrition Decisions

Despite their high priority, healthy nutrition, physical activity and other preventive health factors are rarely adopted over a long term. Traditional nutrition support systems lack of practical everyday knowledge, social support and motivation as well the consideration of the personal context. We address these impediments with a holistic decision support system that empowers people to change their lifestyle successfully. We aim at analyzing previous approaches from various disciplines and integrating them into one concept for nutrition support giving personalized context aware recommendations to each user while presenting and teaching practical information about healthy nutrition. Additionally, we consider the ease of usage of such an application by automating necessary burdens and motivating participants with social incentives. The decision support system is tested in a 6-month intervention study using regression analysis on usage patterns and matrix factorial designs for interacting features. The social and interactive components are observed in a 1-year field study, utilizing a realistic environment.