Your participation is entirely voluntary. All data collected as part of this project are subject to strict data protection regulations.
The research project is being carried out by the Digital Epidemiology Lab (EPFL). We’re happy to provide the results and discuss the main findings with you, and we’re available to address any questions you may have. To give you an overview of the project, here are the key points to bear in mind. More detailed information follows.
Our research project aims to determine how eating habits influence cognitive performance in healthy people. More specifically, we want to explore the relationship between our daily diet and various brain functions, such as memory, problem-solving ability and speed of thought. The aim is to determine whether certain diets or nutrients are associated with better cognitive performance, and to understand how these effects may differ from one individual to another.
The aim of this Swiss study is to generate evidence to guide personalized dietary recommendations for improving and preserving cognitive performance, while taking into account individual specificities.
Form of participation: If you agree to take part in our project, you will be asked to track all your food intake, including water and drinks, on the MyFoodRepo app, a smartphone application developed by our research team that lets you track food intake using artificial intelligence. You'll assess your cognitive performance by playing a series of smartphone games using the Lumosity app, a smartphone application provided by Lumos Labs. At the same time, you will be asked to complete online questionnaires that will enable us to better understand your lifestyle and eating habits. Participation in the study is entirely online, via your smartphone.
Procedure for participants: If you wish to take part in the project, you must first register on this study website, and complete a questionnaire about your physical characteristics. Once our research team has accepted your enrollment, you will receive login details for the MyFoodRepo and Lumosity applications on your smartphone, their respective tutorials, and instructions on how to take part in the Food & You Cognitive study. A trial period of three consecutive days will enable you to familiarize yourself with the study instructions and decide whether you wish to continue your participation. If you choose to continue, your participation will begin the day after the trial period, and will consist of following the same protocol for 14 consecutive days. You are free to end your participation at any time. Data generated during the trial period will not be collected.
Taking part in this project can bring you direct benefits:
- You'll learn about scientific research and contribute to studies on nutrition and cognition.
- Thanks to the free access to the MyFoodRepo app, you'll gain valuable information about your eating habits.
- During the study, you'll enjoy free premium access to the Lumosity application, including games and features for analyzing your cognitive performance.
- The cognitive assessment games will give you a better understanding of your cognitive abilities.
Taking part in this study is risk-free, as it involves sharing data on your daily food intake and cognitive performance via your smartphone, without changing your lifestyle habits.
In this information page, our research project is simply referred to as a project. If you agree to take part, you are a project participant. This project will enable us to examine the influence of diet on cognitive abilities. We are asking you to take part, as participation is open to anyone who is in good health, lives in Switzerland and has a Swiss telephone number. Participants must have a smartphone (iOS 15.0 or Android 8.0 or higher) with internet access. Participants must also be fluent in English so as to understand the study participation protocol and provide consent to participate.
Although we know that diet and lifestyle play an important role in our overall health, there is still little precise information on how these factors specifically influence our cognitive abilities, particularly in healthy people. So we'd like to find out how our daily diet relates to memory, concentration and other brain functions.
If you would like to take part, you will be asked to provide information about your food intake and lifestyle, and to complete simple daily cognitive assessment tests, all via smartphone (see chapter 3 for details). These data will enable us to better understand these links and improve our knowledge in this field.
The project consists of two successive phases:
- A trial period of 3 consecutive days, during which you will learn the study protocol, become familiar with the MyFoodRepo application, and begin tracking your diet.
- A 14-day participation phase, during which you will continue tracking your diet with MyFoodRepo and start playing cognitive games on Lumosity after your breakfast, lunch, and dinner. We will collect the data generated by the smartphone applications during this phase.
Full participation in the study represents a total duration of 17 days. You will be free to leave the study at any time. We aim to recruit at least 200 participants nationwide. This project is being carried out in compliance with Swiss legislation. We are also following all internationally recognized guidelines. The relevant ethics commission has examined and authorized this project.
The study takes place exclusively remotely, via your smartphone, and extends over a total of 17 days, including 3 days of initial testing (see Section 2). If you decide to participate in this study, your contribution will consist of:
- Use the MyFoodRepo app to track your entire food intake, by photographing your meals, scanning product barcodes or manually entering your consumption.
- Complete a series of 4 cognitive games on the Lumosity app after your breakfast, lunch and dinner. These 4 games are designed to perform simple and short cognitive performance tests on smartphones. We'll ask you to complete these 4 games after breakfast, lunch and dinner, which corresponds to playing the games three times per day of participation.
- Fill in online questionnaires to share details of your lifestyle. Participation in this study will require you to devote around 15 minutes a day to collecting nutritional and cognitive data. In total, this represents around 255 minutes, or 4 hours and 15 minutes, over the 17 days of participation, including the three-day test phase.
If you take part in this project, it may help you to better understand your eating habits through the use of the MyFoodRepo application, which will give you access to your meal history, as well as their micro and macronutrient composition. For the entire duration of the study, you'll enjoy free access to the Premium version of the Lumosity app, which will help you understand your abilities in various areas of cognitive performance. But it's also possible that you won't derive any benefit from your participation. The results of this research could prove important in the future, thanks to the data you share during this study.
Your participation is entirely voluntary. If you choose not to participate, or if you choose to participate and change your mind during the course of the project, you will not have to justify your decision. If you choose to participate in this research project, you will be required to follow the instructions and fulfill the requirements of the research protocol.
There are no risks involved in taking part in this study. Data collection will be carried out via smartphone applications, offering a non-invasive method of gathering information. Participation in this study will require time and effort to organize cognitive performance assessments following meals, which could be perceived as an inconvenience. The cognitive assessment protocol allows participants to take breaks between play if necessary.
If you do not wish to take part in this research project, but remain open to the possibility of participating in other projects, please let the project manager know.
The project will produce various results:
- Individual results that concern you directly. The project manager will notify you during the project of any important new findings concerning you. You will be informed in writing; you can then decide again whether you wish to continue your participation in the project.
- The final results are the objectives of the project as a whole. At the end of the project, the research team will send you a summary of the overall results.
The information collected on the signup page (registration form) will enable us to check whether you meet the conditions required to take part in this study, and will be strictly coded and treated as confidential. This data will be used to determine your eligibility and will only be kept if you are eligible to participate.
As part of this research project, personal and health data are collected and processed, in part automatically. This information is coded at the time of collection. Coding means that all identifying data (name, date of birth, etc.) is replaced by a code. It is not possible to link the data to your person without the code, which remains permanently within the institution. Only a limited number of people can consult your data in uncoded form, and then only to carry out tasks required for the project. These persons are bound by professional secrecy. As a participant, you have the right to consult your data at any time.
Data collected as part of this study will be stored on secure Amazon Web Services (AWS) servers, located in Europe. AWS guarantees a level of protection that complies with Swiss and European data protection regulations, including the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). All necessary precautions are taken to ensure the confidentiality and integrity of stored information. All data protection guidelines are strictly adhered to. Your data may need to be transmitted in encrypted form, for example for publication, and may be made available to other researchers. When health-related data are stored on site, they form a database for research purposes. These data may be sent in coded form as part of this project to another database. The project manager will ensure that the country of destination guarantees data protection equivalent to that guaranteed in Switzerland.
Your data may later prove important in answering other questions and/or be sent to another database/biobank in Switzerland or abroad for use in other research projects. However, this database/biobank must comply with the same standards and requirements as the database/biobank for this project. For this re-use, we ask you to sign a separate declaration of consent at the end of this information sheet. This second consent is independent of participation in the project.
The project may be subject to inspections. These may be carried out by the relevant ethics commission or by the promoter who initiated the project. In such cases, the project manager must disclose your data for the purposes of these inspections. All those involved are bound by the strictest professional secrecy.
You can withdraw from the project at any time. However, medical data collected up to that point may still be analyzed in coded form. After analysis, we will anonymize your data to ensure that it cannot be traced back to you. We will permanently erase the code linking them to you, so that no one will know that they are yours. The main purpose of this procedure is to ensure data protection.
You will not receive any remuneration for your participation in this research project. Your participation will have no financial consequences for you or your health insurance.
The Digital Epidemiology Lab (EPFL), which initiated the research project and is responsible for its implementation, is liable for any damages you may suffer in connection with the project. The conditions and procedure are laid down by law. If you suffer any damage as a result of your participation in the project, you should contact the project manager.
The project is mainly funded by the Swiss-based Kristian Gerhard Jebsen Foundation, with additional funding provided by core funds from EPFL's Digital Epidemiology Lab, if required.
You can ask questions about the project at any time. If you have any uncertainties during or after the project, you can contact the research team via e-mail at support@foodandyou.org.