The Effect of Personalized Online Nutritional Analysis on the Diets of College Students: Team Research Proposal Draft

Abstract

Obesity in the United States is often referred to as an epidemic, and countless nutrition intervention studies have been done to examine possible preventative measures. Most of these studies involve self-reporting by participants, and many suggest that the best age to target eating habits is college since these students are just beginning to live on their own. We seek to examine how a nutritional intervention without self-reporting will affect the eating habits of our student participants by developing and implementing an interactive diet tracking tool in the form of a website. The website will use the student ID swipe system in the diner to record individual food purchases, and report the healthfulness of the student’s choices on a daily basis. We hope to find that our research will contribute to the literature of the field through testing the impact of a new type of intervention on a fairly unexplored demographic.