The Metabolic Diet App Suite: Metabolic Diet Tracking on the Go!
Lifelong medical nutrition therapy (MNT) is a key part of medical therapy for many inherited amino- and organic acidopathies. But there is a lack of metabolic disorder specific diet intake tracking and meal planning resources. Many individuals living with metabolic disorders experience difficulties following their daily metabolic diet goals. The Metabolic Diet App Suite is a free, web-based metabolic diet tracking tool developed to help people living with metabolic disorders track and plan their daily diets. It was created with input from biochemical geneticists, metabolic dietitians, metabolic patient caregivers, and application developers for use on both mobile devices and desktop computers (http://www.metabolicdietapp.org).
General disorder information is provided for fifteen individual metabolic disorders for example ‘GA1’ (glutaric acidemia), ‘IVA’ (isovaleric acidemia), ‘MMA’ (methylmalonic acidemia), ‘PROP’ (propionic acidemia), as well as a general protein tracker ‘PROT’. Food nutrient content is based on the MetabolicPro™ program food database, compiled by the Genetic Metabolic Dietitians International (GMDI) Technology committee. Each Diet App offers functions such as: secured personal user login/password, user instructions, goal setting, daily intake tracking, food content checks, adding foods and homemade recipes, exportable daily food diary log (update your doctor and dietitian), and developer feedback. Individuals can start by going to the website and creating an account and diet profile, no downloading required. The website provides a user guide: ‘How it works?’ with answers to frequently asked questions (FAQs) such as how to recover forgotten password and usernames and contacting the developers. Initial pilot tester feedback was positive and suggestions used to further improve the App suite. This project was funded by the British Columbia Children’s Hospital Foundation (Treatable Intellectual Disability Endeavor in British Columbia, http://www.tidebc.org, 1st Collaborative Area of Innovation) and the Rare Diseases Foundation (Vancouver, Canada). The Metabolic Diet App Suite is intended as a patient and caregiver support tool. They do not replace the GMDI Metabolic Pro™ diet analysis program or health care professional advice. We hope that this tool helps ease the daily challenge of metabolic diet tracking and meal planning for individuals living with protein or amino- or organic acid restricted metabolic nutrition therapies.
Ho G, Ueda, K, Houben RFA, Joa J, Giezen A, Cheng, B, van Karnebeek CDM. Metabolic Diet App Suite for inborn errors of amino acid metabolism. Molecular Genetics and Metabolism. 2016 Mar;117(3):322-7