MyMeal: An Interactive
User-Tailored Meal Visualization
Tool for Teenagers Battling
Eating Disorders
Desmond Ballance

University of Toronto | [e-mail]

Jodie Jenkinson

University of Toronto | [e-mail]
[ 1] Health Canada.
“Eating Well Canada’s
Food Guide”; http://
www.hc-sc.gc.ca/fn-an/
alt_formats/hpfb-dgpsa/
pdf/food-guide-aliment/
fg_rainbow-arc_en_
ciel_ga_e.pdf/
[ 2] USDA (United
States Department
of Agriculture). 2009.
“Inside the Pyramid”;
http://www.mypyramid.
gov/pyramid/ index.html/
March + April 2010

[ 3] Yellowlees, P. M., Roe, M., Walker, M.K., and Ben-Tovim, D.I. “Abnormal Perception of Food Size in Anorexia Nervosa.” British Medical Journal 296 (1988): 1689–1690.

interactions

Chelsea is a 13-year-old adolescent who was diagnosed one year ago with anorexia nervosa, an eating disorder characterized by self-starvation and excessive weight loss. To meet her under any circumstance that did not involve food, you probably wouldn’t guess that she had an eating disorder (ED). But when you ask her about her feelings toward eating, food, and meal planning, her anxieties are evident. She finds planning a meal extremely difficult, particularly when incorporating healthy quantities of “stressful” foods like carbohydrates and fats into a meal. She relies on her parents to plan her meals and uses measuring cups to determine true portion sizes, because through her eyes, everything looks like too much food.

Nutrition counseling can
help adolescents like Chelsea,
who are recovering from EDs,
to improve their understand-
ing of how to plan balanced
meals. Food guides and sample
menus are available for teach-
ing teenagers about healthy
portion sizes, but none provides
a visual reference about what a
healthy and balanced meal, as
well as a proper portion, should
look like. Since patients with
EDs have demonstrably abnor-
mal perceptions of the size
of food, a meal-visualization
tool could help patients with
EDs feel more comfortable
about portions by helping them
understand what appropriate
food portions look like in the
context of a balanced meal.

Visual Aids for
Nutrition Counseling
Nutrition-focused interactive
multimedia tools are valuable
for improving comprehension,
but to date, no such program
has been developed to help
patients practice their meal-
planning skills and reduce their
anxieties about food portion
sizes. The number of profes-
sionally designed visuals avail-
able to most dietitians for edu-
cating patients with EDs is lim-
ited. Although current visual
aids do provide some reference
points for patients, they are
limited in their ability to help
patients picture complete meals
and feel comfortable with what
constitutes a so-called normal-
size meal.