Posting and sharing photos of food you eat and cook can be a powerful tool to help forge healthier eating habits, a new study reports.

A team of University of Washington researchers describes how some users of Instagram habitually post photos to track their food intake, and seek accountability from followers to meet their goals for healthy eating or weight loss.

The researchers conducted interviews with 16 people who consistently record and share what they eat on Instagram about how and why they use the social media platform to achieve their eating and fitness goals. The research team will use the results to help design tools that support healthy behaviors. They plan to present the paper at the CHI 2017 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems scheduled May 6 -11, 2017 in Denver.

Rather than relying on traditional tracking methods such as calculating caloric intake (as with MyFitnessPal) or food scores (Weight Watchers), the Instagram users snapped quick images of what they ate throughout a day and shared them on Instagram using the #fooddiary or #foodjournal hashtags.

“The benefit of photos is that it’s more fun to do than taking out a booklet or typing hundreds of words of description in an app,” said lead author and University of Washington human centered design and engineering doctoral student Christina Chung. “Plus, it’s more socially appropriate for people who are trying to track their diets to snap a photo of their plate when they’re out with friends – everyone’s doing it and it doesn’t look weird.”

Some used the images as a reference for what they ate earlier, helping them to make good choices as the day went on. Having a visual record of the quantity and quality of everything consumed in a day also helped the users spot missteps and adjust their eating.

“When you only have one data point for a pizza or donut, it’s easy to rationalize that away as a special occasion,” said senior author Sean Munson, assistant professor of human centered design and engineering. “But when you see a whole tiled grid of them, you have to say to yourself, ‘Wait, I don’t actually have that many special days.’”

Beyond the ability to record and share their food choices, the participants chose to use Instagram for the social support and motivation they could gain from like-minded people who use the platform specifically to pursue healthy eating goals. Over time, they explored and followed specific hashtags in order to connect with others interested in the same health challenges, those at a similar stage of progress in pursuit of health goals or Instagrammers who had alternate ideas for diet and exercise routines. The research team recruited participants who followed  #fooddiary or #foodjournal.

Participants said that giving and receiving emotional support to other Instagram users helped them stick to their own goals. The feeling of accountability to other Instagram users and to their followers caused people to be more honest about their eating habits. One participant who had previously used the MyFitnessPal app to track her diet admitted that she would omit mention of certain food items she ate, such as a bag of chips, because it was small.

“With Instagram, it helped me because I was taking a picture of it – it’s real and it does exist and it does count towards what I was eating. And then putting up a visual image of it really helped me stay honest,” the user said.

Users who met their weight-loss, eating or fitness goals said that remaining on Instagram to mentor and encourage others made it easier to maintain their desired behaviors and to continue to be mindful about their health.

“Maintenance becomes pretty boring for a lot of people because your quest to hit a goal has worn off,” Munson said. “This made things more interesting and meaningful for people because after they got to their goal, they turned to thinking about how they could help others and stay accountable to people who were relying on them for support.”

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