Accra-Ghana, June 10, GNA – The Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research (NMIMR), has held a research dissemination workshop to showcase an evidence base validity of its newly developed Food Recognition Assistance and Nudging Insights (FRANI) App.
The FRANI App, developed in collaboration with the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), Plant Village, and Penn State University is a new artificial intelligence (A.I.)-assisted mobile phone application, which seeks to fill in gaps in knowledge regarding dietary practices in the country.
It aims at closing the evidence gap by recognizing foods and tracking food-group consumption, providing diet-related statistics, and gamified nudges to improve dietary behaviour.
Dr Gloria Folson, NMIMR Project Co-Lead, said this had become necessary as unhealthy diets are a critical global concern while dietary measurement methods are time-consuming and expensive.
She said there was limited evidence that phone-based interventions could improve nutrition data collection and dietary quality, especially for adolescents in low- and middle-income countries as such FRANI would give Ghanaians a push towards better behavior and promote healthy eating habits.
Dr Folson said the project, which saw the assessment of diet and nutrition in school-age children, adolescents, and youth in urban and peri-urban areas, when scaled up would provide evidence to inform behavior change interventions as well as changes in relevant policies in the country.
“The FRANI App which addresses many challenges with current dietary assessment methods, could be used to monitor food quality, and could be employed by agencies such as the Ghana School Feeding Programme as well as individuals who want to improve their dietary behavior and health, she noted.
She said FRANI is not yet available on App Store but would further scale up to meet the demand of Ghanaians and ensure that it is sustained, and was hopeful that by the end of 2023, it would be ready for public use.
She urged individuals and institutions interested in FRANI to engage them for further detailing.
Dr Folson also advised adolescents to be mindful of their health as consumption of unhealthy foods is on the increase and is linked directly to their health.
Dr Aulo Gelli, Senior Research Fellow, IFPRI said the Nudging for Good Project team validated FRANI for dietary assessment in adolescent children in Ghana and Viet Nam against weighed records, the gold standard for dietary assessment, and the standard multi-pass 24-hour-recall method.
Results show that using FRANI to measure daily nutrient intake performs equally well, and in many cases even better than the 24-hour-recall.
In addition to the validation study, two randomized pilot studies have assessed the feasibility of FRANI and its effects on the food choices of adolescent girls in Ghana and Viet Nam, both with very impressive results.
The research project, titled ‘Nudging for Good,’ involves an interdisciplinary collaboration between the International Food Policy Research Institute, Plant Village at Penn State University, the University of Ghana (Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research), the National Institute of Nutrition and the Thai Nguyen National Hospital, both in Vietnam.
It was funded by Foundation Botnar, and continued research is currently funded by the CGIAR initiative on Resilient Cities which aims to provide research support to strengthen the vibrant, largely informal urban and peri-urban agrifood sector, to help improve sustainability, equity, and opportunity growth and to mitigate risks to human and environmental health.
