Mullaney et al., 2022
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Many people trying to lose weight focus only on eating less. However, healthy and lasting weight loss is about much more than reducing calorie intake. It involves improving the overall quality of your diet, choosing more nutritious foods, controlling portion sizes and ensuring your body continues to receive all the essential vitamins, minerals and other nutrients it needs for good health. This study evaluated a six-week weight management programme that combined the Portion Perfector portion control device with the MyDietScore personalised diet quality assessment app. The study aimed to determine if this programme could help people to lose weight safely and improve their overall health.
The programme used two complementary tools. The Portion Perfector helps people to serve appropriate portion sizes at mealtimes, making it easier to reduce excess calorie intake without complicated weighing or food tracking. At the same time, the MyDietScore app asks a series of simple questions about everyday eating habits and uses the answers to measure and score the overall quality of the person's diet. Rather than focusing on individual foods or calories alone, the MyDietScore app evaluates eating patterns across several important dietary domains including fruit and vegetables, breakfast cereals, dairy foods, fatty foods, sugary foods and drinks and alcohol. From the user's responses to these questions, the app generates an easy-to-understand dietary quality score together with personalised dietary advice designed to help users gradually improve their eating habits and lose weight.
A major strength of the MyDietScore app is that it promotes healthier food choices rather than restrictive dieting. Its personalised recommendations encourage people to increase their intake of nutrient-rich foods while reducing foods that are high in added sugars and unhealthy fats. This approach helps to support healthy weight loss while also ensuring that users meet the vitamin, mineral and other nutrient intakes which are essential for energy production, immune function, bone health and overall wellbeing.
The results of this evaluation study were very impressive. Participants who completed the six-week programme achieved significant improvements in several important measures of health. On average, they lost approximately 3 kilograms (about 7 pounds) in body weight, reduced their body mass index (BMI) by 1.0 kg/m² and reduced their waist circumference by 6 centimetres (two and a half inches). Participants who used the MyDietScore app also improved their dietary quality score by almost 16 percentage points, demonstrating that the app was able to achieve and measure meaningful improvements in overall dietary quality as these healthier eating habits emerged.
The study also identified specific dietary changes which were linked with greater improvements in weight loss and waist reduction. Increased consumption of high-fibre breakfast cereals and low-fat dairy foods, and reduced intake of sugary foods and drinks were all associated with better outcomes. These simple, practical changes align well with healthy eating principles that most people can adopt and maintain over the long term.
Overall, this research demonstrates that combining the Portion Perfector with the MyDietScore personalised dietary assessment app provides a safe, effective, reliable and practical approach to healthy weight management. By accurately measuring and scoring overall dietary quality, providing personalised, evidence-based dietary advice and encouraging appropriate portion sizes, the programme helped people to lose weight, improve the nutritional quality of their diet and achieve lasting health benefits while simultaneously meeting their recommended vitamin and mineral intakes.