302 - First foods for baby’s first bites: Parental smartphone application behavior when introducing solids to babies

Publication Number: 302.4845

Rachel Ruiz, Solid Starts Inc and Santa Clara Valley Medical Center, Hayward, CA, United States; Venus S. Kalami, Solid Starts, Campbell, CA, United States

Background: Solid Starts is a smartphone application (app) that guides parents and caregivers through the journey of introducing solid foods to infants, through their First Foods Database, a database of over 300 foods available in English and Spanish. The app educates parents on what nutritious foods to offer, how to cut foods for baby’s developmental stage, and recipes that encourage family meals. The use of smartphone apps is of increasing interest in pediatric healthcare. It poses an opportunity to capture and analyze user behavior on a mass scale, while also offering insights for future research, clinical, and educational priorities within pediatric nutrition and feeding.

Objective: 1. Evaluate the volume and characteristics of user app sessions.
2. Identify the top 30 most searched foods in the First Foods Database.

Design/Methods: A 6-month retrospective analysis of de-identified app data from users in the United States was conducted. Prior to analysis, the data was cleaned and incomplete and undefined variables were removed. Number of app sessions, duration of sessions, and the top 30 most commonly searched database foods were analyzed.

Results: Over 6 months, there were 216,773 new app users in the United States that engaged in 3,661,305 app sessions and 9,684,862 food database searches. Of the top 30 foods, egg was the most searched food (584,269 times or 6% of searches), followed by strawberry (470,961 times, 4.9%), banana (414,652 times, 4.3%), avocado (379,179 times, 3.9%), and apple (360,246 times, 3.7%). 5 were rich in iron. One-third was either a fruit or vegetable, while 1/6 were grain-based foods. 4 foods were common food allergens in the United States (egg, yogurt, bread, pasta). (Figure 1)

For the total number of app sessions, the minimum number of sessions was 1 and the maximum was 1051. The mean ranged from 5.9-30.8 sessions, increasing month-to-month indicating that the app was opened more than once and referenced often by users. (Table 1)

Conclusion(s): Our smartphone app is an invaluable resource for instant education and guidance for infant nutrition and feeding. With the rise of health apps, clinicians can deliver timelier anticipatory guidance to patients. Strengths include a robust number of app users over 6 months and an extensive food database. Limitations include the study population being biased toward users with English, Spanish, and tech literacy, with smartphone and internet access. Future directions will look at user behavior in greater detail and international food trends to further glean influencers of infant nutrition and feeding information sought out.

Top 30 Database Food App Views Between May 1 2024 through Oct 31 2024
Figure 1: The top 30 searched foods on the Solid Starts First Foods Database over a 6 month period among users in the United States.

Number of new app users and total number of app sessions by month of app enrollment
Table 1: Number of new app users and total number of app sessions by month of app enrollment over a 6 month period from May 1, 2024 through October 31, 2024. Overall, users who had the app for a longer period of time had more total app sessions.