Publication date: Jul 12, 2024

Anxiety symptoms are factors that directly affect eating habits, but this interference can be heterogeneous depending on the nutritional status of the individuals. To analyze whether the presence of anxiety symptoms at the beginning of the pandemic influenced the change in food consumption according to its purpose and extent of processing during a one-year follow-up and whether this association occurs equally with excess weight and without excess weight university students. This longitudinal study was carried out with 583 university students from a public Higher Education Institution (HEI) in Brazil. The Generalized Estimating Equation (GEE) was used to verify whether anxiety symptoms were associated with changes in food consumption over time. The results showed that previous moderate/severe anxiety symptoms were associated with an increased frequency of consumption of both fresh or minimally processed foods (β: 0. 2 95%CI: 0. 1; 0. 7 p = 0. 013) and ultra-processed foods (β: 5. 6 95%CI: 1. 8; 17. 7 p = 0. 003), but with different magnitudes. In university students who were not excess weight, previous moderate/severe anxiety symptoms were associated with a reduction in the frequency of consumption of fresh or minimally processed foods (β: -2. 0 95%CI: -3. 5; -0. 5 p = 0. 008), while in those who were excess weight, there was an increase in consumption of ultra-processed foods (β: 4. 5 95%CI: 2. 2; 6. 8 p 

Semantics

Original Article