Don't really have anything to add to Mahsa's post. It can be done, it has been used in published studies though I don't have any references I can put my fingers on. There are still problems such as the ingredients for home-prepared meals that are identified.

dear Phyllis Stumbo,

unfortunately I do not have any experiences of using a camera in food records of FFQ. But it soundes like an interesting and useful compliment when investigating dietary intakes.

I have just used pictures as an aid for the individual to dertermine portion sizes.

Yours sincerely Marianne Angbratt

I think a camera can be used to identify food types but not quantities. For this purpose you can use photograph albuns and measurements devices such as household measures. If it is possible you can ask the person to tell the recipie of unusual dishes. For the usual ones you can create a database where you have all the ingridiets with its quantities.

Anita

Dr. Lenore Arab at UCLA published a paper recently on this topic. Check it out; Eur J Clin Nutr. 2011 October ; 65(10): 1156–1162.

Thanks for the comments so far! It is great to read your thoughts. I am referring to having the client take a camera and create an image of what they plan to eat as an aid for the researcher or counselor to figure out what is consumed as Mariana and Anita commented on. If you are interested in using images as food models to help clients assess intake, looking at the US-NIH National Cancer Institute’s ASA24 automated food record at asa24demo.westat.com. My concern is using a camera to document intake before eating.

Interesting idea, and I think the food image should at least show the type of food and drink, main ingredients, portion size and utensils will be used, food preparation and cooking methods, and probably brand name of proccesed food & drinks.

There's a dietitian here in Australia (Megan Rollo) whose PhD was focussed on developing a method of recording dietary intake using photographs. The results of part of her study are published here: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21844173

While she used a mobile phone and voice recordings to capture intake, I worked with her to modify the method slightly for my research with people with Parkinson's disease. To make it very easy for them, I used a digital camera and went through the photos with them after to get detail (e.g. ingredients in a home made dish) and to capture any missing items (e.g. they forgot to take a photo of their tea and biscuits). Given the fact that they have a disabling disease and their carers/spouses don't have the time/inclination to do weighed or written food records and cognitive issues could lead to errors in recall, photographic records were really the best way to get the information.

The key is to have an item of a known size in the photograph as well in order to estimate portion sizes. Megan also developed a tool for this.

There's already an iPhone App that does this--I think it's called Meal Snap! But it would also be relatively easy to do it on your own, placing standard measuring utensils and/or a ruler alongside the dish.

I agree that the use of books with photos of food and portions are the essential instruments to record dietary intake.

Although using a camera to record what happen in kitchen before eating able us to measure type of food, however, persons who know about camera in kitchen, maybe alter their method and it can not show us usual dietary habits.

It seems obvious that there is nothing that substitute the real viewing of food consumed by the researcher. However, the Hawthorne effect, eg, intimidating during feeding can be also caused by the presence of camera as the researcher. Thus, the association methods are fundamental, eg, the using of the camera to record what happen in kitchen by the researcher or person researched and the checking of information about the images recorded face to face with the persons researched.