Digital Tools to Promote Healthy Eating for Working-Age Individuals: A Scoping Review

Abstract

In this scoping review, we aimed to understand current developments of digital tools for promoting healthy eating behaviors in a work context among working-age individuals and identify research gaps for future design opportunities. The papers published over the last decade (2010-2021) were searched in three databases: the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) digital library, the interdisciplinary library Scopus, and the PubMed database. Initially, 2098 papers were identified, of which 16 papers were included in the final analysis. These 16 papers were published in 15 various conference proceedings or journals between 2010 and 2021, and mainly focused on tracking eating moment and promoting healthy food intake. Our findings showed that four types of digital tools for healthy eating promotion were commonly used, including mobile applications, wearables, service, and multicomponent (i.e., a combination between mobile apps and wearables). Moreover, we found that current digital tools made small using a range of existing working infrastructures. Future design research could focus on personalized, interactive, and playful digital tools in human-computer interaction field with behavior change techniques and user-centered approaches to promote healthy eating behaviors in daily work routines.