The Relationship between Adults’ Perceptions, Attitudes of COVID-19, Intuitive Eating, and Mindful Eating Behaviors

ABSTRACT

In total, 1224 Turkish adults (27.5 ± 9.6 years; 80.6% female) answered sociodemographic questions, and three instruments: Mindful Eating Questionnaire (MEQ), Intuitive Eating Scale-2 (IES-2), and COVID-19 Perception and Attitude Scale. Women’s perceptions and attitudes toward COVID-19 indicated higher concerns than men (p < .001). It was found that IES-2 scores of all subjects increased as body mass index (BMI) decreased and education level increased (p < .001; p = .033, respectively). During the social isolation of COVID-19, the MEQ scores of married couples and those who did not eat take-out foods were higher (p = .027; p = .006, respectively). Interestingly, it was found that as the BMI of the subjects increased, their MEQ scores increased (p < .001). The COVID-19 pandemic, which has social and economic consequences, has a great impact on human health and causes sudden lifestyle changes through social distance and isolation at home. Although social isolation during the epidemic is a necessary precaution to protect public health, the results of this study support that it causes changes in intuitive eating, and mindful eating behaviors.

KEYWORDS:

• Attitude
• COVID-19
• intuitive eating
• mindful eating
• mindfulness

Acknowledgments

The authors thank all the participate in this study. They are warmly acknowledged for their helpful and wholehearted cooperation.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Credit authorship contribution statement

Nevin Sanlier: Conceptualization, Methodology, Data curation, Supervision, Writing - original draft. Sule Kocabas: Visualization, Investigation, Writing - review and editing. Hande Gül Ulusoy: Visualization, Investigation, Writing - review and editing. Bulent Celik: Data analysis.

Ethics statement

The papers cited involving the use of human subjects, have been carried out in accordance with The Code of Ethics of the World Medical Association (Declaration of Helsinki) for experiments involving humans. The papares cited involving animal research have been carried out in accordance with the U.K. Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act, 1986 and associated guidelines, EU Directive 2010/63/EU for animal experiments, or the National Institutes of Health guide for the care and use of Laboratory animals (NIH Publications No. 8023, revised 1978).

The related study is approved by the Ministry of Health on June 6, 2020, and Ankara Medipol University’s Non-Interventional Ethics Committee on May 27, 2020 (AMU-GOKAEK-number:0025).

Informed consent

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

Additional information

Funding

This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.