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

Abstract

COVID-19 has caused various psychosocial disorders, especially stress and anxiety disorders, in individuals. Anxiety disorder experienced by parents affects children's eating behaviors. The Mediterranean diet has also been reported to be protective against COVID-19. Our study aimed to investigate the relationship between parents' anxiety levels and Mediterranean Diet Quality Index (KIDMED) scores, which measure their children's compliance with the Mediterranean diet. The data were collected between April 10 and June 20, 2020. The questionnaire form was created using the KIDMED, Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI), and Coronavirus Anxiety Scale (CAS). Participants were randomly selected and data were collected by snowball method. The criteria for inclusion in the study were a) being literate b) volunteering to participate in the study, c) having at least one child between the ages of 3-18, and d) not having any chronic disease. 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.