Living Alone: Associations with Diet and Health in the Spanish Young Adult Population

Abstract

Eating together as a family has important health benefits, as the diet is more balanced and of a higher quality. Eating together is also a factor in the prevention of diet-related diseases. The promotion of family and shared meals is currently a public health strategy. The aim of this research was to study the eating habits of the Spanish young adult population and their impact on health. An observational, descriptive, cross-sectional study was carried out using surveys. A questionnaire was designed and validated to explore a set of variables related to food and health. The dissemination was carried out through social networks by means of an online form, using non-probabilistic snowball sampling to obtain a sample of 17,969 subjects aged between 18 and 45 years. We found statistically significant differences between people living in a family home compared to people living outside a family home in the healthy eating index for the Spanish population, fish consumption, and fried food consumption. This suggests that the nutrition of people living in a family home is healthier, although their BMI is higher. People living together have a statistically higher healthy eating index value than people living alone; consume fast food, fried food, and ultra-processed food less frequently; and eat fish more often. On the other hand, people who live in a family home or are accompanied are more likely to have a sedentary lifestyle and are less physically active. It was concluded that people living alone have a worse healthy eating index than those living with company, which seems to indicate that nutritional interventions should pay attention to people living alone as a variable to be taken into account in future analyses.

Intermittent Fasting: Socio-Economic Profile of Spanish Citizens Who Practice It and the Influence of This Dietary Pattern on the Health and Lifestyle Habits of the Population

“…This same survey also indicates that a higher level of education is associated with a lower BMI, implying greater awareness of the importance of a balanced diet and the potential health risks associated with incorrect or inadequate nutrition [108]. Moreover, it has been observed that living alone or in an arrangement without family connections influences some nutritional patterns and health habits [110], with individuals living with family having a higher BMI than those living elsewhere [111].…”

Analysis of the Influence of Socio-Demographic Variables and Some Nutrition and Lifestyle Habits on Beverage Consumption in the Spanish Population

“…This is important given the steady increase in recent years in Western society in people living alone [50][51][52]. While it has been observed that living outside or away from the family home influences some nutritional patterns and health habits [53][54][55][56], the results seem to indicate that it has little influence on drinking. Perhaps it could be interesting to study, and therefore make a future line of work, whether this behaviour, observed for the young adult population, also holds for the older population, which is generally a population more at risk of suffering the detrimental effects of loneliness and living alone [57][58][59][60].…”