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Healthy DietNCT06033911

Using FoodFlip© to Improve Food Choices Among Post-secondary Students

A study testing FoodFlip© App with no nutrition symbol and FoodFlip© App with 'high-in' nutrition symbol in people with Healthy Diet, run by University of Toronto at 1 site in Canada.

Completed

Finished. The study has ended and is not enrolling. Results may be posted on the official record.

Official record
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Trial summary

Canada passed mandatory front-of-package labelling (FOPL) regulations where pre-packaged food and beverage products that are high in sugar, saturated fat, and/or sodium are required to display a 'high-in' front-of-pack nutrition symbol (NS). Read more about this study

Who is it for?
Ages 18 years and olderHealthy volunteers can take part
Conditions the study is for
Healthy Diet
What is being tested?
FoodFlip© App with no nutrition symbol and FoodFlip© App with 'high-in' nutrition symbol
Type of treatment
Medical device
Could I receive a placebo?
Yes, some participants may receive a placebo
How many people
133 participants
Where
1 siteCanada
Study dates
29 Jan 2024to 1 May 2024
Phase
Interventional
Are there results?
None posted in the registry

Key requirements

Who can take part, as listed by the sponsor. Only the study team can confirm whether you are eligible, so take this list to your doctor.

  • Ages 18 years and older
  • All sexes
  • Healthy volunteers accepted
  • Adult, Older adult

Who may be able to join

  • ≥18 years of age
  • enrolled at UofT
  • have regular access to either iPhone or Android
  • purchases at least one meal a day on campus
  • able to speak and read English
  • not currently pregnant or in lactation

Who cannot join

  • <18 years of age
  • not enrolled at UofT
  • does not have access to a smartphone
  • does not purchase at least one meal a day on campus
  • unable to speak and read English
  • currently pregnant or in lactation

Trial locations and contacts

1 site in 1 country.

Canada1 site
  • Department of Nutritional Sciences, University of Toronto

    Toronto, Ontario, M5S 1A8

Other trials in Canada

About this study

Official title: A Randomized Controlled Trial Using FoodFlip©, a Mobile Phone App, to Promote Healthier Diets and Food Choices Among Post-Secondary Students

Canada passed mandatory front-of-package labelling (FOPL) regulations where pre-packaged food and beverage products that are high in sugar, saturated fat, and/or sodium are required to display a 'high-in' front-of-pack nutrition symbol (NS). FOPL is an effective tool to inform consumers about products that can harm health and help guide their purchasing decisions. However, as the regulations are limited to the pre-packaged food supply and do not apply to restaurants and other food services, little is known about the potential impact of the NS in such settings. Therefore, the objective of the present study is to investigate the impact of the Canadian FOPL (i.e. the 'high-in' NS) as delivered through a mobile health (mHealth) app in a setting currently not subject to regulations. The study will take place on a post-secondary campus (University of Toronto) hosting students, a population vulnerable to poor dietary choices, nutritional knowledge, and associated weight gain. A 2-week long, randomized controlled trial with a 3-parallel arm study design will be conducted to explore the effect of the 'high-in' NS on students' purchasing behaviours and nutritional knowledge. Eligible participants will be randomly allocated into one of 3 intervention groups: no App control; App control with no NS; App with NS. Questionnaires will be used to assess nutritional knowledge, and receipts will be used to analyze purchasing behaviour.

Read the detailed description

Poor diets increase the risk of non-communicable diseases (NCDs), one of the major causes of disability and premature mortality in Canada. To help improve the diets of Canadians, Health Canada recently promulgated front-of-pack labelling (FOPL) regulations, which mandate pre-packaged foods and beverages meeting and/or exceeding the thresholds for nutrients of public health concern (i.e., sugars, saturated fat, and/or sodium) to display a 'high-in' front-of-pack nutrition symbol (NS). Moreover, previous studies have shown that FOPL can improve purchasing behaviours of consumers by decreasing purchases of nutrients of public health concern and/or foods carrying 'less healthy' FOPL and increase the nutritional knowledge of consumers. However, the FOPL regulations do not address restaurant foods, which are significant caloric contributors to the Canadian diet and are often high in nutrients of public health concern. Further, FOPL regulations do not address foods sold in other institutional settings, including schools, long-term care homes, and daycares. This policy gap may adversely affect the young adult population - a group notably vulnerable to poor diets and associated weight gain and poor nutritional knowledge. Emerging evidence suggests that FOPL can be an effective tool to communicate nutrition information to promote healthier food choices in food service settings; however, limited data exist on the effectiveness of FOPL on menu items available on post-secondary campuses to influence students' food purchasing behaviours on campus and to improve their nutritional knowledge. Furthermore, nutrition mobile health (mHealth) apps have been shown to have the potential to support behavioural change, improve nutrition knowledge, and develop skills to promote healthy eating behaviours through quick information-sharing capacity, customizable tracking abilities, and interactive components. The L'Abbe Lab has developed a mobile application, FoodFlip©, that provides nutrition information at the point of purchase to influence the decision-making process with high usability and functionality in grocery shopping settings. However, the application of FoodFlip© on purchasing behaviours in post-secondary campus settings is unknown. Therefore, the primary objective of the study is to investigate the effect of the Canadian FOPL (i.e., the 'high-in' nutrition symbol) on purchasing behaviours and nutritional knowledge of post-secondary students on campus, using the FoodFlip© App.

Conditions
Healthy Diet
Being tested
FoodFlip© App with no nutrition symbol, FoodFlip© App with 'high-in' nutrition symbol
Keywords
front-of-package labeling, post-secondary foods, university foods, universities, mobile applications, mobile health, smartphone

What participants receive

What participants receive. In a randomised study each person is assigned to one group by chance.

  • FoodFlip© App with no nutrition symbolDevice

    Intervention control: participants will have access to food information such as calories or the Nutrition Facts table through FoodFlip©

  • FoodFlip© App with 'high-in' nutrition symbolDevice

    Intervention: Participants will have access to food information through FoodFlip© with Canada's 'high-in' NS

Study groups in NCT06033911
Study groupRoleWhat they receive
No AppNo interventionNo intervention. Participants will be given access to a web-based submission portal.
FoodFlip© App with no nutrition symbolPlacebo comparatorIntervention control: participants will have access to food information in the shape of a Nutrition Facts table through FoodFlip©. Participants will have access to a submission portal linked to their study ID through the app.
Receives: Device: FoodFlip© App with no nutrition symbol
FoodFlip© App with 'high-in' nutrition symbolActive comparatorIntervention: Participants will have access to food information through FoodFlip© with Health Canada's 'high-in' nutrition symbol. ©. Participants will have access to a submission portal linked to their study ID through the app.
Receives: Device: FoodFlip© App with 'high-in' nutrition symbol

What is being measured

The primary outcome is the main question the study is designed to answer.

  1. Purchasing Behaviors

    Purchasing behaviours will be assessed using receipts and/or records provided by participants over the 2-week study period. Nutritional quality of purchased menu items will be determined using a nutrient profiling model based on the thresholds for Canada's FOPL regulations. Menu items will be assigned a "Menu item score" on a scale of 0 (minimum) to 3 (maximum), with 0 indicating no 'high-in' nutrients and 3 being 'high-in' all 3 nutrients-of-concern. Scores of each menu item purchased will be summed and divided by the total number of purchases to derive the final score for each participant; higher scores mean lower nutritional quality (i.e. worse outcome) and lower scores mean higher nutritional quality (i.e. better outcome). The final scores will then be compared between intervention groups, and change in nutritional quality will be compared within intervention groups at 2 time points: early intervention (end of Week 1) and late intervention (end of study period).

    Measured: 2 weeks

  2. Nutritional Knowledge

    Nutritional knowledge will be assessed using an online questionnaire developed and validated by the L'Abbe Lab. Questionnaire will be completed by participants at 1) baseline and 2) end-of-study. This short (10-15 min) survey of 30 short questions will include questions assessing health literacy and nutritional knowledge that have been adapted from validated questionnaires. Correct answers will be coded as "1" while incorrect answers will be coded as "0", with a maximum of 30 points. Higher scores indicate higher nutritional knowledge (i.e. better outcome), and lower scores indicate lower nutritional knowledge (i.e. worse outcome). Between intervention groups differences in nutritional knowledge will be assessed using ANOVA, while changes in nutritional knowledge from baseline to end-of-study will be compared within intervention groups using Mann-Whitney U-tests.

    Measured: 2 weeks

Timeline

From the start of the study to its completion; the mark is today. Estimated dates are the sponsor’s plan.

  1. First posted13 Sep 2023
  2. Study start29 Jan 2024
  3. Primary completion22 Apr 2024
  4. Study completion1 May 2024

Resources

More details

For doctors and researchers: how the study is designed, who runs it, and its registry IDs.

Study design
Study type
Interventional
Phase
Phase N/A
Primary purpose
Other
Allocation
Randomised
Intervention model
Parallel groups
Model description
2-week long, single-blinded randomized controlled trial with a 3-parallel arm.
Masking
Single blind
Who is masked
Participant
Enrolment
133 participants (actual)
IDs, dates and publications
ClinicalTrials.gov ID
NCT06033911
Sponsor's protocol ID
508519
Other IDs
CIHR UD1-170157
Status last verified
Mar 2025
First submitted
5 Sep 2023
Last updated
30 Mar 2025
Results posted
No
Data monitoring committee
No
FDA-regulated drug
No
FDA-regulated device
No
Individual data sharing
No

Publications

  • World Health Organization, Chronic diseases and their common risk factors. 2005 [cited 2021 Sept 1]; Available from: https://www.who.int/chp/ chronic_disease_report/media/Factsheet1.pdf.

  • World Health Organization, Noncommunicable diseases country profiles 2018. 2018 [cited 2021 Sept 1]; Available from: https://www.who.int/nmh/ publications/ncd-profiles-2018/en/.

  • Health Canada. Regulations Amending the Food and Drug Regulations (Nutrition Symbols, Other Labelling Provisions, Vitamin D and Hydrogenated Fats or Oils) [Internet]. Canada Gazette, Part II. 2022. Available from: https://canadagazette.gc.ca/rp-pr/p2/2022/2022-07-20/html/sor-dors168-eng.htmlHealth.

  • Vergeer L, Vanderlee L, Ahmed M, Franco-Arellano B, Mulligan C, Dickinson K, L'Abbe MR. A comparison of the nutritional quality of products offered by the top packaged food and beverage companies in Canada. BMC Public Health. 2020 May 11;20(1):650. doi: 10.1186/s12889-020-08828-w.

    PubMed 32393206
  • Ang FJL, Agrawal S, Finkelstein EA. Pilot randomized controlled trial testing the influence of front-of-pack sugar warning labels on food demand. BMC Public Health. 2019 Feb 7;19(1):164. doi: 10.1186/s12889-019-6496-8.

    PubMed 30732609
  • Neal B, Crino M, Dunford E, Gao A, Greenland R, Li N, Ngai J, Ni Mhurchu C, Pettigrew S, Sacks G, Webster J, Wu JH. Effects of Different Types of Front-of-Pack Labelling Information on the Healthiness of Food Purchases-A Randomised Controlled Trial. Nutrients. 2017 Nov 24;9(12):1284. doi: 10.3390/nu9121284.

    PubMed 29186803
  • Taillie LS, Reyes M, Colchero MA, Popkin B, Corvalan C. An evaluation of Chile's Law of Food Labeling and Advertising on sugar-sweetened beverage purchases from 2015 to 2017: A before-and-after study. PLoS Med. 2020 Feb 11;17(2):e1003015. doi: 10.1371/journal.pmed.1003015. eCollection 2020 Feb.

    PubMed 32045424
  • Vanderlee L, Franco-Arellano B, Ahmed M, Oh A, Lou W, L'Abbe MR. The efficacy of 'high in' warning labels, health star and traffic light front-of-package labelling: an online randomised control trial. Public Health Nutr. 2021 Jan;24(1):62-74. doi: 10.1017/S1368980020003213. Epub 2020 Oct 6.

    PubMed 33019950
  • Statistics Canada Eating out - How often and why [Stats in brief: 11-627-M2019003], Statistics Canada: Ottawa, Ontario. 2019.

  • Moubarac, J.C., Ultra-processed foods in Canada: consumption, impact on diet quality and policy implications. University of Montreal: Montreal. 2017.

  • Yang Y, Weippert M, Ahmed M, L'Abbe MR. Cross-Sectional Nutritional Information and Quality of Canadian Chain Restaurant Menu Items in 2020. Am J Prev Med. 2023 Jan;64(1):42-50. doi: 10.1016/j.amepre.2022.07.015. Epub 2022 Sep 22.

    PubMed 36155709
  • Murphy SA, Weippert MV, Dickinson KM, Scourboutakos MJ, L'Abbe MR. Cross-Sectional Analysis of Calories and Nutrients of Concern in Canadian Chain Restaurant Menu Items in 2016. Am J Prev Med. 2020 Oct;59(4):e149-e159. doi: 10.1016/j.amepre.2020.05.005. Epub 2020 Aug 20.

    PubMed 32828587
  • Vella-Zarb RA, Elgar FJ. The 'freshman 5': a meta-analysis of weight gain in the freshman year of college. J Am Coll Health. 2009 Sep-Oct;58(2):161-6. doi: 10.1080/07448480903221392.

    PubMed 19892653
  • Levitsky DA, Halbmaier CA, Mrdjenovic G. The freshman weight gain: a model for the study of the epidemic of obesity. Int J Obes Relat Metab Disord. 2004 Nov;28(11):1435-42. doi: 10.1038/sj.ijo.0802776.

    PubMed 15365585
  • Matthews JI, Doerr L, Dworatzek PDN. University Students Intend to Eat Better but Lack Coping Self-Efficacy and Knowledge of Dietary Recommendations. J Nutr Educ Behav. 2016 Jan;48(1):12-19.e1. doi: 10.1016/j.jneb.2015.08.005. Epub 2015 Sep 28.

    PubMed 26424531

Questions about this trial

What is this clinical trial studying?

A study testing FoodFlip© App with no nutrition symbol and FoodFlip© App with 'high-in' nutrition symbol in people with Healthy Diet, run by University of Toronto at 1 site in Canada.

The full registered description is in the About this study section and the official record.

Who may be eligible to take part?

The sponsor lists 6 inclusion and 6 exclusion criteria. Eligibility is decided by the study team after screening, so read the full criteria and contact a listed site.

Is this clinical trial currently recruiting?

The record says: finished, as of the sponsor's last update on 30 Mar 2025. Status can change between updates, so confirm with the study contact before making plans.

Where is the study taking place?

The record lists 1 site in Canada. Whether a site is taking part right now should be confirmed with that site. See every site.

What are the possible benefits and risks?

They depend on the study and the treatment, and no study can promise a benefit. Some participants in this study may receive a placebo. The study team explains the known risks during informed consent, before anyone joins; the record itself does not list them.

Are results available for this study?

The study is completed, but results are not available in the source record. That does not mean the treatment did or did not work.

How can a doctor refer a patient or contact the research team?

The record lists no contact. The official record names the sponsor, who can be asked directly. AzTrials does not enrol participants or take referrals.

What does the primary outcome measure?

Purchasing Behaviors (time frame: 2 weeks). The study lists 2 primary outcomes in all. It is what the study was designed to measure, not a finding.

Where can I read the original study information?

On the ClinicalTrials.gov record for NCT06033911, which also lists 20 linked publications.

Does a listing mean the treatment is approved or proven to work?

No. A listing means the study is registered. It does not show that the treatment is safe, works, or is approved by a regulator.

How often is this information updated?

AzTrials copies changed records from ClinicalTrials.gov every night and reloads the whole registry every week. The sponsor last updated this record on 30 Mar 2025.

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