A Randomized mHealth Trial to Promote Vegetable Intake Through Counting and Goal Setting

Objective To determine if counting and goal setting can increase red/orange vegetable intake. Design Pre-posttest experimental. Setting Midwestern university. Participants Undergraduate students (n = 165). Intervention Those in the intervention group (n = 85) were asked to count the number of times they ate red/orange vegetables and set a goal to eat 1 more time. Main Outcome Measure An estimate (number of times/d) of vegetable intake based on an independent review of uploaded photographs and descriptions of meals from smartphones. Analysis Generalized estimating equations. Results For the intervention group, mean frequency intake increased from 0.9 times/d on Monday to 1.6 times/d on Tuesday and to 1.3 times/d on Wednesday, whereas mean intakes for the control group were 1.0, 0.8, and 0.8 times/d, respectively. There were significant group × time interactions for Tuesday (β = 0.8; P < 0.001) and Wednesday (β = 0.5; P = 0.006). Conclusions and Implications A mobile method that helped people count their daily red/orange vegetable intake and set a goal appeared to increase consumption. This finding suggests that nutrition education programs that provide people with easy ways to track specific dietary behaviors might be effective at helping them attain goals.