Evaluation of Planetary Health Diet Recommendation Using Mobile Application in Adults

Overview

In recent years, the planetary health diet proposed by the EAT-Lancet Commission has underscored the importance of massive changes to healthy eating on a global scale to prevent environmental degradation. Diet management helps individuals control their food consumption, and this can be supported by the availability of technology through mobile applications. The use of mobile applications considers several aspects such as convenience, comfort, and self-management efficiency in maintaining food consumption. By using an application with the latest features related to diet management, which is equipped with dietary education features, gas emissions, and calculating environmental impacts, it allows users to increase self-awareness to reduce gas emissions from food consumption. Therefore, developing recommendations for a balanced nutritional diet, healthy lifestyle, calculating diet quality, and greenhouse gas emission in one application that is presented in one easy step is an important point in providing comprehensive information for a wider range of potential users. The main objective of this study is to assess the differences in changes in body weight, BMI, waist circumference, and systolic and diastolic blood pressure between the group that was given education on a planetary health diet with calorie restriction and a healthy lifestyle and the group that received education on a balanced diet with calorie restriction and a healthy lifestyle in adults using the 3rd generation of EatsUp mobile application. We will conduct a 24-week intervention for overweight and obese adults.

The EAT-Lancet Commission has proposed a planetary health diet that will improve health, by reducing the burden of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) and will reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions (GHGE) from food production and consumption globally by up to 80%. The global burden of non-communicable diseases is expected to worsen and the effects of food production on greenhouse gas emissions, nitrogen and phosphorus pollution, loss of biodiversity, and water and land use will reduce the stability of the Earth system. The global food system contributes 19-29% to global greenhouse gas emissions (GHGE) and according to Behrens et al. (2017), the average Indonesian diet produces GHGE of 1.6 KgCO2eq per day. Indonesia, with the characteristics of food consumption depending on the staple food (rice), a slight increase in meat consumption, and the occurrence of obesity in the population of the rich and poor population, shows the early stages of a diet transition. The diet transition effect in developed countries has resulted in an increase in the prevalence of obesity in NCDs, while in developing countries it has caused a double burden of malnutrition. A healthy diet has an appropriate caloric intake and consists of a variety of plant foods, low amounts of animal-sourced foods, unsaturated rather than saturated fats, and small amounts of refined grains, highly processed foods, and added sugars. This study is a randomized clinical trial (RCT) study for overweight and obese adults. The research will be conducted in DKI Jakarta and will consist of 4 (four) stages; screening, recruitment (baseline), providing education, and final data collection (end-line). To find out changes in the provision of education, data will be collected at the beginning of the month and the 6th month (end of the study).