COVID-19 Stress and Food Intake: Protective and Risk Factors for Stress-Related Palatable Food Intake in U.S. Adults

Abstract

(1) Background: The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has caused disruptions to what people eat, but the pandemic’s impact on diet varies between individuals. The goal of our study was to test whether pandemic-related stress was associated with food intake, and whether relationships between stress and intake were modified by appetitive and cognitive traits. (2) Methods: We cross-sectionally surveyed 428 adults to examine current intake frequency of various food types (sweets/desserts, savory snacks, fast food, fruits, and vegetables), changes to food intake during the pandemic, emotional overeating (EOE), cognitive flexibility (CF), and COVID-19-related stress. Models tested associations of stress, EOE, and CF with food intake frequency and changes to intake. (3) Results: Models demonstrated that the positive relationship between stress and intake of sweets/desserts was stronger with higher EOE, while the positive relationship between stress and intake of chips/savory snacks was weaker with higher CF. Higher EOE was associated with greater risk of increased intake of palatable foods. (4) Conclusions: Findings suggest that emotional overeating may escalate stress-associated intake of high-sugar foods, and cognitive flexibility may attenuate stress-associated intake of high-fat foods. Differences in appetitive and cognitive traits may explain changes to and variability in food intake during COVID-19, and efforts to decrease emotional overeating and encourage cognitive flexibility could help lessen the effect of COVID-19-related stress on energy dense food intake.

Use of Food Services by Consumers in the SARS-CoV-2 Pandemic. How the Eating Habits of Consumers Changed in View of the New Disease Risk Factors?

“…Similar relationships are also indicated by other authors, including an increase in consumption of animal products and snacks [ 53 , 113 ], increasing salty snacks [ 32 ], increasing fat consumption [ 31 ], increasing ‘junk food’ consumption [ 61 ], snacking between meals [ 59 ], increased use of alcohol [ 65 ], and increasing sweets [ 34 , 65 ], especially during the lockdown. Authors [ 35 , 69 , 114 ] indicated that the stress associated with pandemic influenced on increases in emotional food of consumption, tasty but with high energy value. It should be emphasized that poor food choices in the long term could result in increased risk factors for cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, and cancer [ 115 ].…”

“…The transition period associated with a pandemic situation, therefore, has the potential to change eating habits, forcing most people to stay at home, sometimes in home-offices, for long periods, often with unlimited access to food in home and less physical activity [ 28 ]. Staying at home for a long time may favor snacking between meals, eating ‘junk food’ snacks, and drinking alcohol, and it may affect the consumer’s individual choices about cooking at home, buying ready-to-eat products, as well as using takeaway food services [ 28 , 29 , 30 , 31 , 32 , 33 , 34 , 35 , 36 ]. The perceived risk of COVID-19 and guidelines for minimizing personal contact might have been discouraging consumers from using gastronomy during the pandemic [ 37 , 38 ].…”

“…Some studies indicate the socio-economic effects of pandemic on individual aspects of the world economy [ 54 , 55 , 56 , 57 , 58 ]. Many previous research papers [ 14 , 28 , 32 , 33 , 34 , 35 , 53 , 59 , 60 , 61 , 62 , 63 , 64 , 65 , 66 , 67 , 68 , 69 , 70 , 71 ] conducted during the pandemic were devoted to the impact of the situation on eating habits, adherence to a the Mediterranean diet in Italy, a potential protective role of micronutrients, phytochemicals and Mediterranean diet against COVID-19, the potential to increase the stress level and its associated impact on the pre-existing diseases such as diabetes and changes in the diet of people or the impact of nutritional status in patients with COVID-19 and those who have had the disease [ 61 , 72 , 73 , 74 ]. So far, only a few studies [ 31 , 63 ] have analyzed the impact of the pandemic on use of food services.…”

Binge Watching during COVID-19: Associations with Stress and Body Weight

“…The ratings (range = 1-5) were averaged over the 16 items into a mean score. Mean stress scores have been linked to child [23] and adult [24] intake, as well as altered feeding behaviors in parents and heightened appetite in adults [23,25]. Stress tertiles were created by splitting the ordered distribution into thirds, resulting in groups reporting low (range = 1-2.21), moderate (range = 2.25-3.09), and high (range = 3.13-5) stress levels.…”

Impact of COVID-19 pandemic on diet behaviour among UK adults: a longitudinal analysis of the HEBECO study

“…Individuals tend to consume more palatable and less healthy foods during stressful life periods [62]. A greater decline in mental health or increased stress, boredom or anxiety from COVID-19 has been associated with increased ultra-processed, HFSS foods intake, decreased FV intake and using snacking as a coping mechanism [9,14,32,55,56,[63][64][65]. The increased HFSS snacking at the start of the pandemic may reflect such maladaptive coping mechanisms [63,66].…”