Understanding the impact of COVID-19 on healthy and sustainable diets and wellbeing in UK parents

Bridge, G., Vogt, J. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3178-2805, Armstrong, B., Schmidt Rivera, X., Sandhu, A. and Stetkiewicz, S. (2022) Understanding the impact of COVID-19 on healthy and sustainable diets and wellbeing in UK parents. In: Bruce, D. and Bruce, A. (eds.) Transforming food systems: ethics, innovation and responsibility. Wageningen Academic Publishers, pp. 365-370. ISBN 9789086863877 doi: 10.3920/978-90-8686-939-8_56

Abstract/Summary

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a profound influence on people’s lives worldwide and created an opportunity for insights into where and how resilience needs to be improved for a variety of systems. This study assessed the impact of COVID-19 on the diets, physical activity levels, and wellbeing of a sample of UK parents. Parents are likely to be particularly impacted by the pandemic due to the changes in childcare and schooling during the pandemic. Key data regarding food consumption, physical activity, and well-being were gathered through an online survey conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2021. Changes in the health and sustainability of individuals’ diets at this point in comparison to their pre-COVID-19 norms (based on dietary recall) were assessed, along with changes in physical activity and wellbeing scores. Among survey participants, dietary changes were split, with some participants increasing consumption of healthy and sustainable foods (such as vegetables) while others increased consumption of unhealthy and unsustainable foods (such as processed red meat). Emotional eating was identified as a maladaptive way of coping with COVID-19 related stress that resulted in an unhealthier diet.

Item Type	Book or Report Section
URI	https://reading-clone.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/106396
Identification Number/DOI	10.3920/978-90-8686-939-8_56
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Life Sciences > School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences > Department of Psychology Life Sciences > School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences > Nutrition and Health
Publisher	Wageningen Academic Publishers
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