Effectiveness of interactive technology-assisted interventions on promoting healthy food choices: A scoping review and meta-analysis.

Making healthy food choices is crucial for health promotion and disease prevention. While there are an increasing number of technology-assisted interventions to promote healthy food choices, the underlying mechanism by which consumption behaviours and weight status change remains unclear. Our scoping review and meta-analysis of 17 studies represents 3,988 individuals with mean ages ranging from 19.2 to 54.2 years old and mean body mass index ranging from 24.5kg/m2 to 35.6kg/m2. Six main outcomes were identified namely weight, total calories, vegetables, fruits, healthy food, and fats and other food groups including sugar-sweetened beverages, saturated fats, snacks, whole grains, sodium, proteins, fibre, cholesterol, dairy, carbohydrates, and takeout meals. Technology-assisted interventions were effective for weight loss (g=-0.29; 95% CI=-0.54, -0.04; I2=65.7%, t=-2.83, P=0.03) but not for promoting healthy food choices. This highlights the complexity in creating effective interactive technology-assisted interventions and understanding its mechanisms of influence and change. We also identified that there needs to be greater application of theory to inform the development of technology-assisted interventions in this area as new and improved interventions are being developed.