Parental Anxiety and Children's Mediterranean Diet Quality Index during the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

COVID-19, which affected the whole world in 2019, caused various psychosocial disorders, especially stress and anxiety disorders in individuals. Anxiety disorder, which is very common in parents, affects children's eating behaviors. The Mediterranean diet, which is one of the healthiest diets in the world thanks to its comprehensive vitamin and mineral content, has also been reported to be protective against COVID-19. In our study, we aimed to investigate the relationship between parents' anxiety levels and KIDMED scores, which measure their children's compliance with the Mediterranean diet. The questionnaire form, which was created using the Mediterranean Diet Quality Index (KIDMED), Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI), and Coronavirus Anxiety Scale (CAS), was delivered to the parents by snowball method. In total, 589 parents were reached. Conditions such as parental gender, relationship status, number of children, and dietary supplement use before COVID-19 were only significantly associated with BAI. (p<0,05). Pearson correlation coefficient showed that the CAS and BAI score was weakly associated with the KIDMED score (0,39*; 0,01 and 0,14*;0,01). As a result, compliance with the Mediterranean diet protects individuals against diseases. It is very important for children and adolescents, who are the individuals of the future, to have a healthy diet. To protect public health in future pandemics, healthy eating patterns such as the Mediterranean diet should be expanded.

Keywords

• COVID-19
• KIDMED
• Mediterranean Diet
• Parental Anxiety

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