Traqq

Traqq is an innovative smartphone-based app that can serve to collect dietary intake data in a fast, flexible, and reliable manner. Traqq is flexible in terms of the dietary assessment method and can be used as a:

• Food record, where participants can enter consumed foods throughout the day.
• Recall, where participants are invited via smartphone notifications to record consumed foods during a specific time window. The recall-module is flexible in terms of the reporting window; enabling 1-hour recalls up to 24-hour recalls.

Traqq

Participants can report their food intake by clicking on the notification or opening the app. Traqq features an extensive food list based on the Dutch Food Composition Database (NEVO). Participants can select consumed foods in the food list, after which they are asked to report consumed amount and eating occasion. Consumed amounts can be reported in household measures (e.g., cups, spoons), standard portion size (e.g., small, large) or amount in gram.

Participants can also report all ingredients of a recipe and the amount consumed (i.e., yield and retention factors are automatically taken into ac-count) under the ‘My Dishes’ feature. In addition, this function can also be used to create frequently consumed food combinations (e.g., daily breakfast) to simplify the reporting of these items.

When participants did not consume anything in the specified time window they can simply press the “I did not eat or drink anything” button.

Tailoring

Traqq is developed as a flexible tool and can be tailored to specific research questions:

• Selection of dietary assessment method:
  • Food record: participants are asked to report consumed foods throughout the day, or part of the day.
  • Recall: participants are asked to report consumed foods over a predefined time period. Traqq facilitates recalls of the previous hour up to the previous 24-hours (e.g., 2-hour recalls, 4-hour recalls)*
• The food list can be adjusted to ensure coverage of foods of interest (e.g., sports nutrition for athletes, provided foods during a trial)
• The reporting of consumed amounts can be adjusted (e.g., only gram for a weighed food record) or completely turned off (e.g., in case consumed amounts are not of interest)
• Eating occasions can be adjusted or turned off (e.g., in case eating occasion is not of interest)
• Time of consumption can also be requested for each consumed food
• Tailored sampling schemes can be created to facilitate automatic data collection during a prespecified time period
• Linkage to Qualtrics is possible to enable additional questions related to reported food items, eating occasions, or time windows (e.g., food choice motivations, contextual factors)

* We recommend using Traqq for shorter recalls and Compl-eat for full 24-hour recalls.

Nutrient computations

Dietary intake data collected with Traqq can be used to assess current and habitual intakes of food groups, food items, energy and nutrients. For this, the extensive nutrient computation module of Compl-eat is used.

Processing of the data

Processing of the data will be done by our dietitians at the end of the study. After the nutrition calculations different kind of outputs are available, such as nutrient intake per day and nutrient intake per item per day. Data will be provided as .CSV file that is compatible with any statistical software program.

An additional data check can be performed by our dietitians. In this check the reported data will be checked for possible over- and underreporting and will be compared to a reference population.